


Top-Secret-Can't-Even-Look-It-Up-on-the-Internet Shit

by ScripStrel



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Anger, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Back to the Future References, Bookstores, But mostly angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Childhood Friends, Crushes, Dependency Issues, Doctor Who References, Electricity, Emotional Baggage, F/M, First Kiss, Friendship/Love, Give Michael Mell Character Flaws, Hearing Voices, Heavy Angst, High School, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Interviews, M/M, MST3K References, Michael's an angry boy, Miscommunication, Nightmares, Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Squip, Secret Crush, Slow Burn, Slow To Update, Spider-Man References, Star Wars References, Teen Angst, The Matrix References, but with plot, please, video game references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2019-09-16 19:36:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16960245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScripStrel/pseuds/ScripStrel
Summary: “You’re allowed to be mad, you know.”Michael forced the drink down. Were they really talking about this? He really, really didn’t want to become Jenna’s newest gossip product… But she was looking at him with actual sympathy. All of his pent-up feelings rolled and clumped in his stomach like the boba in the bottom of the cup. “No, I know,” he started. “It’s just—” Michael swallowed, throat gummy. “He’s gone through hell and I shouldn’t blame him and I especially shouldn’t make it worse.”“He also put you through hell.”Everything was fine. Everything was back to normal.Except it wasn't.Or: Michael's trying to be a good friend. He really is. He's just not sure exactly what that means anymore.





	1. Chapter 1

High school sucks ass. 

Really, you could ask any high schooler and they’d tell you just that. Sure, seventh grade might be the universal worst—and again, ask anyone who’s gone through it—but high school’s still shit. Everyone’s constantly stressed and sleep deprived and expected to make important life decisions all the way. 

Hooray!

Michael Mell walked through the hallway, head bent low and shoulders slumped against the ball and chain of his backpack. Thanks a lot, AP classes for making him carry around paper bricks that he’d never even open. His clunky white headphones were clamped over his ears, droning along with the same stupid reggae playlist he’d been listening to since freshman year. He should really expand his music taste, he thought vaguely, before shrugging to himself. There was something nice about the familiarity, at least. 

Speaking of familiarity, the musty smell of cafeteria “food” wafted through the air. Michael’s stomach clenched. He really wasn’t hungry today; something about waking up with a nervous knot in his chest would do that. He would bail and drive to a convenience store for something somewhat edible, but he was also conveniently broke. 

Hooray.

The garbled chatter of way too many people started leaking through into his music as he blinked away an impending headache. The urge of routine thrummed in his veins. Lunch was happy. Exciting. A break, at least. Michael plastered on a smile and swaggered his way towards his usual table, only to find it empty. 

Yep. Awesome. Things had changed. He had his new friends now. It only made sense that he’d be sitting with them at their table instead of with Michael in the back corner. Somehow Michael had hoped that he might pop back and forth, but it had been weeks. He clenched his teeth in their plastic grin and braced himself. He’d always known where the popular kids sat, he’d just never made any effort to be that close to the average student’s line of sight. Taking a deep breath, he marched over. 

The laugh caught his ear first, piercing through the pulse of his music. Man, it was weird to hear that laugh now, in a ‘seeing your elementary school teacher at Starbucks’ kind of way. Michael gripped his backpack straps. He usually caused that laugh, for heaven’s sake, so why did it stick a dagger behind his eyes now? There was an awkward sting to his smirk as he drifted over towards the source, who was sitting amidst the group of color-coordinated, actually presentable teenage gods. 

Jeremy Heere hunched over at the table, snorting and giggling as the girl in front of him tried to defend herself through her own laughter. “I’m just saying,” she explained, “that whoever thought boba was a good idea had to have been high! You don’t just decide to put weird black starch balls in your tea for any other reason, no matter how good it turns out to be!” Michael was sure he’d seen her around, probably in the play, or in passing at that disaster of a Halloween party, or just in general, but her name was completely slipping his mind. 

“Oh, for sure!” Michael interrupted, the cheerful honey in his voice sticky in his throat. Great. Now they were all looking at him. Why did all of his ideas have to be so stupid and reckless? He could’ve just sat on his own and finished the English homework that had been burning a hole in his backpack for weeks while ignoring the other things burning a hole in his chest, but  _ no. _ No, he’d decided to try to talk to the exact people who probably hated his guts.

After all, he’d been the only one left backstage that night who wasn’t screaming and writhing on the ground. He wasn’t sure how much any of them would remember, but they had to know that Michael was at least a little responsible for the shit that went down. 

Hell, there was Jake Dillinger, whom he’d punched in his perfect face. 

Michael swallowed down his insecurities and clapped Jeremy on the back. “I always get my best recipe ideas when I’m high. You guys ever try pickles and ice cream?”

“Michael!” Jeremy’s eyes lit up, before his gaze crumbled a little. “Sorry, dude. I didn’t realize. I can come sit with you if—”

Michael waved him off. His best friend might be the biggest dick around… Okay, yeah, no. He was  _ definitely  _ the biggest dick around, what with this being just about the fourteenth day in a row that he’d blown Michael off with barely any explanation, not counting the several weeks of completely ignoring him. Still, Michael wasn’t about to stoop to his level. If Jeremy wanted to sit with his new pals, what kind of friend would Michael be to stop him? The asshole kind, that’s what.  

“Nah,” he said, “I was just dropping by to say hi. You guys have fun.”

“Wait, Michael—”

“Yeah, Headphones! We can make room. Scoot over Brooke.” Rich Goranski, the once perpetrator of several slurs thrown Michael’s way, both verbally and scribbled on his backpack, shoved at the boba girl, and she shifted with a roll of her eyes. Michael watched in awe as his former bullies suddenly  _ made a space for him. _ He’d never asked for this, but Rich pulled Michael down to the bench, squashed between him and Brooke, who, now that he knew her name, Michael recognized as Jeremy’s ex. 

Before he knew it, Michael was wedged amongst the Olympians of Middleborough. His heart crawled its way into his mouth. Why couldn’t he just let Jeremy live his new life without dragging himself along? Something in his chest throbbed, wishing he  _ had _ been enough of an asshole to make Jeremy leave, because he sure as hell hated this alternative. They were all looking at him. “I… uh… Thanks?” he choked out. 

“Don’t sweat it, Mikey!” Michael flinched. Geez, she was loud. Who played to the back row during lunch? He glanced over at Christine Canigula, leaning over Jeremy to give him the best hug she could. “Any friend of Jeremy’s is a friend of ours!” 

Michael really hoped she wouldn’t take that to the obvious extreme. She was  _ dating _ Jeremy, and if that extended to all his friends, she’d have a more gossip-strewn reputation than that Madeline girl he always heard rumors about, which was also weird. When did Jeremy get enough friends to have a slut-shame worthy circle? Michael’s mind latched onto something else, though. “Mikey?” he asked.

“Yeah! That’s what Jeremy calls you—well, you know, sometimes—so I assumed it was a nickname.” Christine sighed and looked longingly at the middle distance. “Gosh, I wish I had a nickname. I mean, Christine gets shortened to Chris, and my dad still calls me Cordelia, because I played her at this one summer camp thing where we did King Lear and Hamlet and Macbeth and Othello and all of the complicated and tragic Shakespeare shows that we’d never get to do here, and he even shortens that to Cordie sometimes…” She blinked, finally connecting her tangential dots. “Huh. I guess I do have a nickname. Anyway, it’s okay if I call you that, right? I can stop if you want.”

Holy shit, just listening to her gave Michael a headache. He shrugged, looking away. “Nah, it’s fine.” It’s not like he could really do anything about it, but still, Jeremy hadn’t called him that to his face since middle school. His stomach tightened. It clenched when he saw Jeremy practically swooning over Christine as she went on babbling to the popular crowd. That was not a good look on his best friend, especially after all the shit that could be traced back to it.

Michael crossed his arms and slumped down. 

“Brooke, what were you saying about boba? By the way, did you guys know that ‘boba’ actually just translates to ‘boob?’ I mean, who names something like that?”  
“That’s what I’m saying!” Brooke piped up again, continuing on her tirade. She flipped her hair out of her face and into Michael’s. Hooray. “I love it, but it’s so weird in so many ways. Try explaining it to an alien or something. You’ll sound insane.”

“You could say that about so many things, though,” Jake said, leaning over in his wheelchair and gesturing with his cardboard pizza slice. Another wave of guilt washed over Michael, settling into the cold clamp in his gut. Sure, he hadn’t been the one to  _ make _ Jake walk on his broken legs, but he’d been the one trying so damn hard to save Jeremy that he forgot about the collateral. Michael hunched over himself further. “Super hot peppers? Pufferfish? It’s hella poisonous, and it’s a delicacy.”

“Or gold?” Michael hadn’t thought Chloe Valentine could talk about anything other than who had slept with whom, to be honest.

“Who eats gold?” Jeremy asked, legitimately confused.

“I eat gold,” Brooke said, smiling sweetly. Michael watched over his glasses as Jeremy somehow didn’t shrink back into himself at her gaze, instead falling into banter like it was the most natural thing. 

“It just tastes like metal, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s great for stabilizing the life forces, and it’s got all sorts of purifying powers.” Michael clenched his teeth. Fucking rich people and their dumbass reasons for doing dumbass things.

Jenna Rolan didn’t even look up from her phone as she spoke. “You’re in AP Chem. You of all people should know that all that spiritual energy stuff is bullshit. You know what gold is made of on an atomic level, and it’s pretty much the same as anything else.”

Brooke just shrugged. “Don’t bash it ‘till you try it.”

“You just like it ‘cause it makes you feel fancy,” Christine said, flourishing her hands in a ‘fancy’ way. 

“So?”

“Can we please stop getting mad at Brooke for eating gold? She can eat whatever she likes,” Jeremy said.

_ What? Like your dick? _ Michael knew they’d never done anything while they dated, and he didn’t dare make a remark like that in this kind of social circle, but the comment still flashed through his mind. It stung. He imagined that it could be just him and Jeremy again, shooting the breeze as they shot down digital zombies in his basement. He imagined that he could actually be himself with his best friend again. It had been months since they last played co-op. 

Now he’d been kicked into some new single-player, one without a tutorial or even a map. 

He buried his head in his arms.

“What? You’d rather talk about the time you ate a bath bomb?” Rich’s voice this time. Michael was debating putting his headphones back on against the onslaught of chatter.

“How did you know about that?” Jeremy’s blush made it all the way to his voice crack. “And it wasn’t a bath bomb, it was shampoo. And I only did it because Michael dared me!”

Michael just grumbled in return, not lifting his head. “You’re the one who said the soap my mom bought smelled good enough to eat.”

“I was burping up bubbles for weeks,” Jeremy said. “And we were seven. Tell me you didn’t eat something weird as a kid.”

“He used to eat Play-Doh,” Jenna said. 

“It’s true, bro,” said Jake, slapping Rich on the back so hard Michael could hear it.

“Who didn’t eat Play-Doh? Shampoo is way worse.”

Christine suddenly shrieked, snapping everyone’s gaze to her and yanking Michael’s face off of the terrible oily plastic he’d been studying. Holy Mother of Arceus, was she shrill. Michael’s eardrums would prefer being stabbed with broken glass. “Guys! Guys guys guys guys guys!”

“Spit it out, girl,” Chloe said.

“Reyes just emailed me!” She thrust her phone into the air. “Apparently we’re doing a spring musical this year!” 

Jake raised an eyebrow. “And?” he prompted, mouth full of pizza.

“And it’s the first time in  _ ages _ and we’re doing my—okay, one of my—absolute, all-time favorite shows! Guess what it is!” Christine squealed, hugging herself. Fucking theatre kids and their unending energy. 

“Christine, they don’t care enough to try to figure it out,” Jeremy said, patting her on the back and reading the email over her shoulder as she leaned into him. “Sweeney Todd? Isn’t that that one Tim Burton movie with Johnny Depp?”

“Isn’t that  _ every _ Tim Burton movie?” Chloe asked. 

“It’s a  _ classic.  _ Sondheim is, like, the god of writing musicals. Oh!” Christine pawed at Jeremy’s arm, and Michael rolled his eyes at the way Jeremy’s face lit up. Playing wingman for so long had sort of desensitized him to the payoff. “Do you think I’d make a good Mrs. Lovett? I mean, I’d love to be Johanna, too, but her stuff if so  _ high _ and I’m not really a soprano no matter how hard I try. But like, I’ve been practicing By The Sea and The Worst Pies in London and A Little Priest for like, my whole life! Which, I guess, is probably kinda weird, considering it’s a really dark show and they bake people into pies and I’ve definitely known it since at least fourth grade.”

Jeremy grabbed her by the shoulders, ending her tirade. He grinned at her. “You’d be perfect, I promise! I mean, I’ve never seen it,” he said with a shrug, “but you’re great at everything, and no one’s gonna want it more than you.”

Christine looked scandalized. “Jeremy! That’s not how it works. I can’t just want it. I have to earn it!”

“With your history, I’d say you’ve already earned it.” Jeremy gave her a peck. On the  _ lips.  _ Michael really thought he must’ve imagined it, considering the last time Jeremy had told him  _ anything _ about his relationship with Christine, they’d agreed on one measly lunch date, and were walking around holding hands, but no, Christine smiled back as he wrapped her in a hug, squeezing into his chest. God. “You already know it all anyway.”

Christine bounced and buzzed in his arms, hugging him so tight that Michael could almost feel Jeremy’s ribs cracking. “This is so great! I can’t wait to do it with you! You’d make such a great Toby! Or maybe Anthony?”

Jeremy unwound his arms from her shoulders. “Uh… Chris?” he said, avoiding her gaze. “I’m not gonna audition.” He muttered the last part, more embarrassed than he’d been about anything all of lunch. More embarrassed than he’d been about kissing her. Who fucking knew?

“What? Why not?” Christine pouted.

Jeremy rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you  _ remember _ how the play went? Reyes won’t even look at me anymore.” He shrugged. “Besides, I can’t sing.”

“You have a great voice when you use it, and I can help you practice!” Christine leaned into him and gave this  _ intense _ puppy eye look. Michael debated between laughing and retching. They were  _ sickening. _ At least the last few months had apparently paid off. He stuffed his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, fiddling with the loose cord of his headphones. “Please, Jeremy? It’ll be so much fun. ”

Jeremy lit up beet red. “I—Uh…”

“Let the man live his life, Christine,” Rich said, hitting Jeremy on the back and sparing him from his girlfriend-induced panic. “You can’t keep him locked up in the auditorium forever. He promised me an Xbox sesh, anyway—don’t think I’ve forgotten, tall ass.”

Jeremy blinked at him. “Rich, that was ages ago.”

“And you never followed through, so now I’ve gotta resort to saving you from Reyes, and I’ll tell you, he gets  _ extra _ Reyes-y when you have to audition. You should be thanking me.”

The bell rang and Rich gave Jeremy’s shoulder one last slap before everyone swept up the remains of their lunch and hoisted two-ton backpacks off the floor and dispersed, chatting away. Jeremy waved off Christine, spending an extra minute cleaning up like some kind of model citizen, which he definitely wasn’t, if the years of junk food trash carpeting Michael’s basement had anything to say about it.

The knot in Michael’s gut hardened into a rock. 

This was the first time he’d had a shred of privacy with Jeremy. Bile crawled its way up his esophagus, but he couldn’t just sit there and pretend it didn’t matter. If he didn’t bite the bullet and do it then, he never would.

What exactly he was going to do, he wasn’t sure yet.

“You know, it’s funny.” Michael’s voice was surprisingly light and teasing, considering the weight knitting together between his shoulder blades and the venom gathering on his tongue. He tried to swallow it down, but it burned sour. “Of all the weird things you and Rich have eaten, you’d think Suave Naturals and Play-Doh would be at the bottom of the list.”

Jeremy glanced at him, raising an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I’m just saying, no one even had to dare you last time.” The poison was congealing in his throat. He stood and gave a bitter laugh.

Jeremy blinked, confused.“I don’t—”

“If I told you eating gold would get you laid, would you try it?”

Jeremy’s jaw set. “Dude.” 

Michael shrugged. His skin was itching. His hands ached to grab at something. Hopefully, that something wouldn’t end up being Jeremy’s throat. He tried digging the headphone aux plug into his palm in his pocket. It didn’t help. “I mean, it’s not too crazy,” he said, “considering last time.”

Michael really thought for a moment that Jeremy was about to punch him. He probably deserved it, too. Instead, Jeremy sighed, almost defeated. He heaved his backpack onto his shoulders. Some new black one—free of Rich’s old bullying. Michael’s throat started to close up. “Could you quit it?”

“Why should I?” His fists found their way out of his hoodie, clenched at his sides. He was sick of feeling bad for himself. He was sick of feeling bad for everyone else. Michael wasn’t the one who needed to apologize.

“I said I was sorry!” 

He scoffed. “You haven’t been acting like you are.”

Jeremy’s face screwed up, turning pink. His gaze darkened. He crossed his arms. “I’m allowed to have friends other than just you!”

“ _ Just _ me?” Michael finally let the fire into his voice. His eyes were starting to sting. “Oh, I get it. You—”

“Jeremy, are you coming?” Christine peeked around Jeremy, biting her lip as she scrutinized Michael. His anger fizzled out in her soft, curious gaze. 

“Michael, I—” 

He didn’t look at Jeremy. “Whatever, man. See ya.” He didn’t watch as Jeremy walked off with the girl of his dreams. Didn’t watch as Jeremy relaxed at her excited rambling. Didn’t watch their joined hands swinging between them. Instead, he glared down at the table he never should’ve tried to join. He kicked at the bench halfheartedly. 

That went well.

“No one blames you, you know.” Jenna said from behind him. She was holding a cup with a super fat straw, dark beads gathered at the bottom. 

“How long have you been here?”

Jenna raised an eyebrow, taking a drink of her tea and chewing on a tapioca pearl. “You know, the middle of the school cafeteria is kinda a shitty place for private conversations. I’m sure I’m not the only one who heard, if that’s what you were worried about.” 

Michael collapsed at the table, head in his hands. He was probably gonna be late to his next class at this rate, but he really didn’t want to face the tidal wave of students. Or the fact that he and Jeremy were at the same table in the new seating chart. Maybe ditching was a better idea. 

Jenna sighed, placing the boba cup on the bench next to him. He glanced up at her. She shrugged. “I noticed you didn’t eat anything. I wasn’t gonna finish it anyway. Christine calling it ‘boob tea’ kinda ruined my appetite.”

“Thanks,” Michael muttered, nudging his glasses up his nose and taking a sip. It really just tasted chewy, but the cool liquid soothed the burn in his throat.

“You’re allowed to be mad, you know.”

Michael forced the drink down. Were they really  _ talking _ about this? He really,  _ really _ didn’t want to become Jenna’s newest gossip product… But she  _ was _ looking at him with  _ actual _ sympathy. All of his pent-up feelings rolled and clumped in his stomach like the boba in the bottom of the cup. “No, I know,” he started. “It’s just—” Michael swallowed, throat gummy. “He’s gone through hell and I shouldn’t blame him and I especially shouldn’t make it worse.”

“He also put you through hell,” Jenna said, sitting next to him.

Michael ran a hand over his face. “But, like. I’m his best friend. I’m supposed to be there to help him, not rub it in his face.” He waved towards where Jeremy had disappeared down the hallway.

Jenna hummed and stole a sip of the boba. “If he’s really your best friend, he’ll agree that he deserves it.” She followed Michael’s gesture with a point of the cup. “He put all of us through hell.”

Guilt forced its way into Michael’s skull again. He was supposed to help Jeremy with his self-blame issues, not make them worse. So much for being a good friend.“He’d think he deserves it just because he exists. That’s how bad that… uh…” Michael suddenly remembered the rumor he’d heard about the Play. Did Jenna know? “The…  _ ecstasy _ fucked him up.”

She smirked. “Michael, the only people who believe the drug story are Chloe, Brooke, Jake, and Reyes. I’m the one who made it up in the first place.”

“Oh. Uh, okay.”

“And Jeremy’s right.” Jenna put the boba cup back in his hands and leaned back on the table, staring at the ceiling. “He has other friends now. You don’t have to be his therapist all the time anymore.”

Michael made and indignant noise, squeezing at the cup. It was shockingly cold against his hands. He tried to focus on the biting chill. “I’m not his therapist. I’ve just always—”

“You’ve always put him before you. Yeah.” Jenna turned and scrutinized him. “You’ve always just been the perfect best friend because that’s what you do.” She shook her head. “You’re a good guy, but shit, Michael.” She waved at him. “You’re practically his sidekick like this.”

Ouch. “I mean, I’m player one,” Michael mumbled, taking another drink.

“Really? Still?”

He nearly choked on the tapioca. “What do you—?”

“Face it,” Jenna said, staring him down. “Would you really have ever talked to any of us if he hadn’t done it first? You didn’t seem to want to at all.”

“I—”

“Jeremy got that thing to make him cool. Believe it or not, it did just that.” Jenna groaned and stood. “Look,” she said. “I tag along to Chloe’s popularity. I’m a gossip dispenser and that’s it. You—” she shoved a finger at his chest, “—tag along to whatever Jeremy’s up to. You’re his friend. That’s just about it.”

“Thanks for the confidence boost,” Michael grumbled.

Jenna shrugged. “I wasn’t saying it like it’s a problem, but I can tell you first hand that it sucks to only be included for one thing.” She crossed her arms. “No one asks how you’re doing when you could be telling them who Madeline slept with this weekend instead.”

Was—? Was Jenna actually kind of… opening up? “Are you okay?” he asked, staring down into his tea and stirring it around with the straw.

“Is anyone?” Her voice was flat.

“No, I just.” He peeked up before shriveling back down at her incredulous look. “If you want to talk to someone, I’m here.” 

Jenna sighed. “Jeremy’s lucky to have you, but you’ve gotta stop letting your life revolve around him. Get a hobby. Get a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, or a cat, or something. I don’t care. Just let him go.”

Michael chewed his words around with the boba. “I’m not… dependent on him.”

“You sure act like it sometimes.” Jenna put her hands on her hips and stared down at him. Michael started to wonder if he could drown himself in his drink. “Look,” she said, “I might be able to… help you, but you’ll have to hear me out.”

Michael shook his head. He didn’t really think anything could help at this point. “What are you talking about?”

Jenna slung her bag off of her shoulders, shuffling around in its depths. “I’m probably gonna regret this, and I’m gonna tell you right now not to underestimate it. It’s very… persuasive.” She held up a tiny ziplock bag: the kind used for jewelry and cocaine, but this one just held a single gray Tic-Tac. 

Michael’s blood ran cold. He set down the cup of tea, hands shaking. “Where the hell did you get that?”

Jenna shrugged. “I’m the one who made that Pansy Serum prop shit. I chucked the rest of the extras, but…” She cleared her throat. “Well, it had predicted that you would probably show up, and it made me keep one so it could give it to you if it had the chance.”

This was  _ not _ happening. They were supposed to be done with this. They were supposed to be recovering and forgetting and moving on, not tempting fate. “So how do I know this isn’t still part of that plan?”

Jenna chuckled. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand how someone can be so skeptical and so trusting at the same time.”

Michael didn’t dare take his eyes off of the pill, in case it exploded or something. Kinda like finding a spider on the ceiling, just out of smashing range. You just sit there and make sure it doesn’t scuttle off, because it’s so much worse to lose track of it. “But I don’t trust you right now.” 

“Good. Don’t let it trick you into trusting it, either.”

Michael’s brain was going numb. There was no way this was happening. “What makes you think I’m gonna take it?”  _ Why was Jenna so calm about this? _

“If you want to know what’s up with your friend,” she prompted, “you know, why he’s acting different, which you seem to want to…” She trailed off, realizing Michael wasn’t really listening. She forced the bag into his hands. Michael went stiff. He wanted to throw it across the room, but he couldn’t help but hold it delicately. Geez, she’d just handed him a bomb. “Basically,” Jenna said, “you’re gonna need to experience it for yourself. And you need a hobby. This gives you both. I don’t think you’re gonna find any other decent way to research.”

“But after what it did to Jeremy—” Michael stuttered, still frozen in terror of the breath mint in his hands.

Jenna sighed. “I hate to tell you this, but I’m pretty sure he did a lot of it to himself.”

“But—” He finally tore his eyes away from the pill to stare up at her.

“Forget Jeremy. You’re allowed to be selfish sometimes.” 

And with that, she headed off to class, completely ignoring the tardy bell ringing overhead, leaving Michael alone with his worst nightmare, a cup of half-dissolved tapioca pearls, and probably a detention when he was found still sitting alone in the cafeteria halfway through the period.

Hooray.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And, uh..." Michael said, relieved for the incessant chatter of the freedom-bound class covering up... whatever this was, "I kinda needed more detail. You never really told me anything helpful."  
> "Anything helpful? Oh my God."

“Okay, so what happened next?” Michael was sitting at a cafe table outside of the nearest frozen yogurt shop, a pen and clipboard in hand and a gray, oblong pill in his hoodie pocket, weighing him down like the One Ring.

Brooke sat in front of him, stirring caramel into her yogurt. She played with her spoon, twirling the stings of sugar around. “I don’t know. I mean, what usually happens when you’re on ecstasy?”

Michael fought back an eye roll. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never done it.”

Really, he didn’t want to take advantage of Jeremy’s friends like this. If he, as a bystander, wanted to forget the whole ordeal, there was no way _they’d_ appreciate him digging it back up. Still, he’d rather try to hack into some Japanese black market than try it for himself, and this was the next best thing.

“I’m not really sure. It’s all kinda fuzzy.” Brooke took a bite of her yogurt.

Well. It’s not like Brooke had done ecstasy either, and as long as she thought that’s all that happened, she couldn’t be that messed up. Right?

What usually happens when you’re on ecstasy?

“Okay, like. Did you see anything weird or hear voices or anything?” Michael clicked his pen.

“Oh, yeah. Totally.” Brooke stabbed at a strawberry with her spoon. “I mean, there were all these flashing lights and it kinda looked like I’d got dropped into that one Fairly Odd Parents episode where they go through the tv?”

Michael raised an eyebrow. “ _You_ watched Fairly Odd Parents?”

Brooke shrugged. “Off and on, I guess. I was always more of a Phineas and Ferb gal, once I outgrew Strawberry Shortcake, that is.”

Michael made a note, both of the fact that _ecstasy_ was like Channel Chasers, but then also that Brooke had watched it in the first place. Guess eating gold (even her yogurt was sprinkled with metallic flakes) didn’t make her too high-and-mighty for some good old-fashioned cartoons.

“Okay,” he said, “anything else?”

“There was this hologram thing of Mary-Kate Olsen talking to me.”

Michael chewed on nothing for a moment, despite his own yogurt sitting abandoned right in front of him. Here was the important stuff. The stuff Jeremy had refused to tell him. “Did she say anything?”

Brooke gnawed on her spoon. “I’m not sure,” she said. “It wasn’t really actual words. More of a vibe, I guess? It was just super nice to have her there. She kept saying super encouraging stuff. It just made sense to listen to her, you know?”

Well that wasn’t what he was looking for. From what little Jeremy _had_ told him, or, well, from what little he’d been able to figure out from what he hadn’t, there’d been a degree of specific verbal instruction. Hell, Jeremy still flinched when a teacher talked, tuning in with some kind of programmed attention. Everything was a command now.

He made a note. Just another dead end. Another red X next to Brooke's name, to match those near Chloe's and Jake's and even Jenna's.

Chloe said hers had told her she was almost perfect. Almost. And that she could help her become a goddess. How could she not? She already _was_ Chloe, but as everything she could be. Perfect. And then, of course, Chloe had complied without complaint.

Jake's made him immune to pain, which might've been a bit extreme and was definitely scary, sure, but otherwise it was pretty much the same as Chloe's. Promises of perfection and divinity.

Jenna, despite being able to remember that she hadn't, in fact, done ecstasy, really just had a fuzzy imprint—she’d refused to tell him who it was of. Sure, she got actual orders, but she related it more to the Imperious Curse, because Jenna was a both a total nerd and a self-proclaimed Slytherin. She heard the commands and then didn't question them, because it just felt right to follow them.

He hadn't even tried to talk to Rich. Just because the guy had a lisp and a dorky laugh now, he would probably punch Michael if he stepped into his personal space like that.

None of them had the signs he was looking for. No emotional trauma, no electric currents, nothing he could use to figure this out.

Jeremy hadn't told him shit, but Michael had read the doctor's notes and therapy reports (at the request of Jeremy's dad, who needed some help figuring out how to be a decent parent again). There was some heavy fuckery going on in Jeremy's head.

But, of course, Jeremy was avoiding him since their mini-fight, so the primary source was off the table. Whatever. Michael knew the basics anyway.

Jeremy refused to tell his new therapist much either, but the notes basically just pegged him as slightly schizophrenic—which was bullshit, but admittedly the best explanation not straight out of an Asimov story—because he'd flinch at voices no one else could hear and had mentioned once that Keanu Reeves still floated around in his nightmares. The hospital had some records of nerve damage. Over-heightened electrical currents or something.

So, Neo from the Matrix had been lowkey torturing Jeremy since that day at the mall, and Jeremy was pretending everything was fine. He had a girlfriend. He had street cred. Everything was fine, as far as anyone but Michael was concerned.

There was a supercomputer still digging a hole in his mind.

He didn't want to think about it, but his brain could be a bitch. Jeremy wanted to be cool. He wanted to be respected and he wanted to break out of his everyday, pre-programmed life. He was a loser, looking up to the popular people. It only made sense that he’d be easily convinced by the Christ archetype, the rags-to-riches, the mild-mannered normie who eats a magic pill and gets pulled into a better reality where he he’s not only better than he was, he’s the _best._ He’s the One. He’s _special._

Hell, Jeremy had been trying to figure his way out of the Matrix since the first time he and Michael watched it curled together on the couch, and that Keanu ripoff had made it happen, even if it fucked his head further into the system in the process.

Maybe he should've seen it coming, but Michael was still stuck in this Matrix of his own—head down against the world, just doing as he'd always done.

Jesus, maybe Jeremy had been _right._

Fuck. No, he couldn't think like that. There was nothing wrong with knowing where your strengths were. Nothing at all wrong with doing your own thing. You didn't have to be at the top of the world to fit into it.

Nothing wrong with accepting that shit will never change.

Michael scribbled his pen against the clipboard, watching an inky blob dig into the paper the way he wished it could into his skin. No, he didn't _need_ to use a clipboard. Honestly, a spreadsheet would probably save one hell of a headache, but he was a man of aesthetic, and surveys needed clipboards, okay?

No one had told him shit. Jeremy was telling him even less. His stomach clenched as he meandered his way through the halls, clipboard under his arm, pen clicking madly, headphones obnoxiously silent because everything he tried to listen to just made him feel more empty. More like the world was just happening around him. No matter what he did, it would keep trudging on. It didn't give a damn about anyone, sure. It's not like he was an exception. Logically he knew that, but it really fucking sucked to feel the weight of just how little he mattered. This Solo Mode wasn't as fun as advertised.

Brooke wasn’t helpful. Chloe wasn’t helpful. Jake and Jenna weren’t helpful, and he wasn’t looking to get shoved into another locker by Rich.

Jeremy was the worst of them all.

He couldn’t just _not_ figure it out. He he would rather actually do ecstasy in front of an audience than take his own damn red pill. The Matrix had been plenty kind to him in the past, thanks.

So that just left—

“Mikey!” Christine said, throwing her arms around him as he took a tentative peek into the drama classroom. Goddamnit.  

“Hi Christine,” he said. Fuck, she gave tight hugs. He shoved her away before she cracked a rib or suffocated him. “So I’m doing a survey for my journalism class,” he started, using the same excuse he’d used for everyone else (well, except Jenna). Yes, he was actually taking the class. No, they didn’t give a shit about what happened at the Play. All the news was about which track stars had improved their times by point-oh-three seconds and other such bullshit. Michael didn’t even bother to show up half the time. Still, it was better than them thinking he was prying for his own sake. “We’re doing an exclusive called ‘A Midsummer Nightmare’ about what happened at the Play. I thought you could maybe give me an interview?”

Christine’s face went sour. “I can’t believe that all happened,” she said. “What about ‘the show must go on?’”

“You were all having seizures,” Michael reminded her.

"That's not an excuse!"

"Right," Michael said. Damn. Priorities, much? "So, about those seizures..."

Christine brightened. "Oh, yeah! Yeah, I can totally give you an interview!"

She seriously made Michael's head spin. "Okay, well." He looked down at his mini-script. He didn't have to like journalism, but he did know well enough that interviews had to be consistent, and his cover story wasn't gonna be very believable if it wasn't. "How do you feel about the ecstasy rumor?" he read. "Do you think it's accurate? Are you upset that there are apparently no repercussions for spreading a serious drug to a school function?"

"You know as well as I do that Jenna made that up," Christine said.

Michael's blood went thick. He wasn't sure why he should be surprised at Christine knowing the truth, but he also hadn't thought she'd be so frank about it. Struggling to keep his cool, he said, "You know about the—"

"Obviously," Christine said with a wave of her hand. "I knew a kid at this theatre camp who took one and ended up in a mental hospital.” She frowned and shook her head. “And Jeremy tried to get me to take one even before the Play."

That sent his congealed pulse into apparent biofreeze. Yes, he knew Jeremy was responsible for all the shit. Why else would he have showed up to stop it? Still, when he got there, Jeremy had been fighting it. Trying to stop it. Somehow Michael assumed he'd been forced to spread it. The news that he'd apparently been on-board with corrupting Christine earlier—It wasn't pleasant.

Had he really been convinced that easily to force it on her when she wouldn't consent on her own? Jesus _Fuck,_ that was so much worse than he'd thought.

Michael swallowed thickly. "Uh. Okay." He wondered if Christine had thought about this even darker side to her boyfriend, or if she even cared. "Well I can skip ahead, then."

Christine's eyes went wide. "You're not telling everyone what really happened, are you!?" she squeaked.

Michael blinked, looking up from his scratchy, mid-panic notes. "I, uh... No."

"What kind of journalist are you?"

Hang on, wait. She was angry about that now? What in the world—? "Excuse me?" he said.

Christine folded her arms and pouted at him. "Shouldn't reporting be about spreading the truth?"

 _Geez._ Talking to her was like sticking his head in a tumble-dryer. "I, uh... I'm usually an editor," Michael admitted.

"Then why are you doing interviews?" Christine asked, still glaring.

This spiral was getting them nowhere. Michael reached up under his glasses to rub at his eyes. "Because I was there and—"

"Then it's biased! You can't have biased survey data! How corrupt is the school newspaper anyway?"

"I'm not doing this for them!" Michael snapped, finally releasing a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

She blinked. "Huh?"

"Look." Michael adjusted his glasses. "I just want to know more about what happened. For my sake. And uh..." He stared at his clipboard. Easier than making eye contact. "Well, Jeremy's kinda freaking me out still," he said softly. "I want to know what's going on so I can help, and y'know... Be a good friend and stuff." He shrugged and twirled his pen. He really didn't want to talk about this right now, especially not with Christine of all people.

Strangely enough, she looked back at him with sympathy. Her gaze was warm, at least. "Why didn't you just say so?"

Michael didn't want to shit talk his (ex?) best friend to said best friend's girlfriend. He didn't want to talk to Christine about much of anything. Again, talking to her was like talking to a hyperactive kindergartener hopped up on Fun Dip who'd also been spinning in circles to see how long they could keep their balance. Keeping her attention where he wanted it was like herding cats, and he wasn't sure he trusted her to have enough of a filter to keep something even sort of secret. Still, she was trying to help. She wasn't lecturing him like Jenna and she wasn't snapping at him like Jeremy. Maybe he could work with that.

"He—God, this is gonna sound stupid," Michael said, running a hand through his hair. "He kinda seems to hate me and I just didn't want any of this getting back to him, and I know you two are dating and probably talk about stuff, so..." He drifted off.

She smiled at him. Soft, small and sweet. It was one of the few times he'd seen her sincere in a way that didn't break glass. "Michael, you're my friend too."

A part of him wanted that. It did. She was nice enough and she'd never been particularly rotten to him, but. Well, another part of him still didn't know what to do with her. She'd been the reason Jeremy turned himself into a dick. Michael wasn't sure just how much he still resented her for that. "Yeah. Sure. I know," he said.

Christine opened her mouth to say something more, but was interrupted by Mr. Reyes's booming call to places. She grinned and hopped up, glancing back at Michael apologetically. "I gotta go, sorry," she said. "We'll talk later!"

"Right." Well so much for that.

He _had_ to talk to Jeremy. He couldn't just let it slide that he'd been so willing to... to take advantage of Christine like that. To force her into shit. She was migraine-inducing, and seeing them hold hands and give each other nose kisses was sickening, but there was still part of Michael that was happy to see Jeremy happy. He'd made himself and everyone else miserable in the process, yeah, but he was happy. He was an idiot who'd let himself be manipulated, but he'd done it for her and it had worked.

Now Michael wasn't so sure.

There had to be a line in the sand between getting a girlfriend and drugging the object of your affections.

Hell, there was a line, and even if Jeremy hadn't like... sexually done anything (as far as he knew... _God)_ , she'd still said no. No means fucking no, buddy.

Maybe that was the problem. He'd been trained not to take no for an answer. If you can't get what you want now, you can stand up straighter and make new friends and sleep with Chloe until the whole world falls into your lap.

Jesus.

Even knowing all that, Michael still wanted to know what was going on. How to fix it. How to get the old Jeremy back. He'd been under the influence, right? The devil-on-the-shoulder was taken to the extreme. He was taking orders: Brooke's offering you a ride, you know what to do. Good boy. We'll just take a swig of Mountain Dew and rewire your moral compass.

Nope. Still sounded beyond shitty.

Michael needed a strategy. Every boss had a weak point. An attack pattern. Some way to beat it down without getting the shit kicked out of you. He just needed a walkthrough… For a game only he had ever played, and all he had was a minty MacGuffin and a few useless interview questions.

Fuck.

Christine did get back to him. On his school email, which he was only checking because his old Steam account was linked to it.

"Hi, Michael!" she wrote.

"I hope this gets to you. I just realized I didn't have your number or your Facebook or Snapchat or anything, and I would've asked Jeremy but you DID say you wanted this to be just between us, so here we are. So, about the Play thing. I think it would just be best to tell you everything? First, Jeremy didn't show up, which was weird because I thought he really enjoyed theatre and he was really good at it (which is why I think it's even weirder that he's not even CONSIDERING doing Sweeney Todd, because it's a fantastic fun show, but I also know where he's coming from when he says Reyes is mad at him, because he kind of is). Speaking of Reyes, with Jeremy ditching and Rich still in the hospital (I went to see him earlier that day and he was in a full-body cast!) he was playing both of their parts. Actually, I think he was really thrilled by the opportunity to be onstage instead of backstage, but obviously he won't admit to that.

"Anyway, everything was going fine until suddenly it wasn't? Most of the chaos was backstage and I was onstage so I didn't actually see much of it, but then I drank the Pansy Serum (mint and Mountain Dew taste AWFUL together, by the way) and the entire show was gone for. Which sucks, because we were just getting to my favorite part and, honestly, it was super terrifying to be on stage but not be aware of where everyone was or which of my lines came next. I wasn't even _on_ stage when I was supposed to be, and I couldn't convince my body to get me there. I've had anxiety dreams about that, actually, even before it happened in real life.

"But so basically after I drank the serum I started hearing all these voices. I'm pretty sure some of them were the other people in the cast. I think Brooke and Chloe were chanting something at some point, but there was a main voice, and I can't for the life of me remember whose it was except it was kind of like Hillary Clinton before it changed to this other thing, but I could see her too, and she was telling me what to do, and it was terrifying.

"I like knowing what's going on. I like having scripts and blocking and direction so I know I won't mess up, because I'm usually all over the place. Except this was freaky because I really didn't have to think at all. No, hang on. That's not right. I COULDN'T really think at all, and I think that freaked me out the most, because she could have made me do pretty much anything. What if she made me eat a spider? I know there are so many worse things you could force someone to do, but there was a spider in my room earlier and I hate spiders and the idea's kinda stuck in my head—

"Anyway, so I was there and I really wanted to kiss Jeremy, and I'd kind of wanted to do that for a while, but I hadn't admitted it to myself, so that was a thing too, except I didn't get to kiss him because the next thing I knew, I was drinking MORE Mountain Dew and my head kind of exploded.

“I'm just now realizing that probably wasn't super helpful, but I'm sorry I can't remember much more. I remember how it felt but it's hard to put in to words. It felt easy, you know? It felt like I'd never have to worry about anything again.

"But this email is getting really long and I need to work on my audition stuff, so I guess that's it! Let me know if you need any more help!

"Love, Christine.

"P.S. I just remembered! It was Ruth Bader Ginsburg!."

Dissecting actual info from her jumble was not particularly easy nor particularly fun, but Michael got enough. Orders followed without question, generally being at peace with said orders, and a hallucination of some not-Hillary Clinton political lady (as far as Michael knew, she was on the Supreme Court or something). And a hive mind, apparently? That made sense, based on what Michael had watched happen at the Play, but it was weird to hear it from someone who'd been involved.

Something still didn't add up, though. None of them had problems. They obeyed without question. Yeah, there was enough awareness that they weren't just puppets, but they were still basically compliant with whatever was pulling the strings. Was Jeremy different? He was physically fighting it when Michael showed up, arguing with himself, choking on the words it wouldn't let him say (S-O-R-R-Y. It's five fucking letters. It shouldn't be _that_ hard), and generally flailing about in pain. Hell, the hospital had records of nerve damage as if he'd been pumped full of electricity.

So... So _why_ was Jeremy different?

“You could just ask me, you know.”

Michael groaned internally. He hated when his brain did that. Was it normal? Maybe not, but when he was arguing with himself or blatantly ignoring something or whatever, his internal monologue turned into more of a dialogue. Hello Inner Jeremy.

It wasn't just the existence of a conscience-like voice that bugged him. Honestly, that would probably be pretty helpful. No, the shitty thing was that it was Jeremy's voice, programmed into his brain from twelve years of knowing the guy. And normally, that would be okay, too, but since Jeremy started being an ass... Well. Let's just say that the voice in his head picked up some tricks.

Not all the time. Usually it was still just “You probably shouldn't get high when you have a test tomorrow,” or “Hey, you were going to grab some snacks on the way home. We can't have a gaming party without junk food,” or “You're my favorite person.”

It was really just a little stretch when it decided to spout “Loser” and “Waste of space” and “Why the fuck do you even bother?” Unfortunately, that stretch was... talkative. Without Actual Jeremy around to fill the silence, Inner Jeremy was both nasty and a chatterbox.

"Jake told me you were asking around about the Play." It took Michael a moment to realize he heard that with his ears. He shook himself out of his head. Right. Class had just ended. People were packing up. Jeremy was looking over at him from his seating-chart-ordered desk next to his, twirling a pencil and biting his lip.

Michael blinked. "Did he?"

Jeremy started tapping his pencil against the desk. "Since when does the school paper give a shit?" he asked. "Are you trying to get me in trouble or something?" His expression soured.

Stuffing loose leaf and empty worksheets into his bag, Michael sighed. More homework. "Why would you think that?"

"Last I heard, the news is that I drugged everyone." Michael couldn't see Jeremy's face from inside his backpack, but his tone wasn't good. It was... well, whatever it was, it wasn't jovial. He wasn't joking or anything.

"You kinda did," Michael said, still rifling through his bag.

Jeremy sighed. His pencil tapped harder. "You were there," he said. "You know I was fighting it."

Michael zipped his backpack, standing abruptly and turning his back as he hoisted the bag of bricks onto his shoulders. "You tried to get Christine to take one before that."

The tapping stopped. "...She told you that."

He really didn't want to get into this right now. He didn't even know why he'd brought it up, except that he couldn't just let it slide. But. But not now. "Sorry," Michael said, glancing at the graphite stippling Jeremy had left.

"Dude!" Jeremy slammed the pencil on the desk. It clacked and started rolling. "You're digging up shit on me and you can't even bother to get my input?"

The pencil rolled off the desk and bounced on the floor. "I thought you'd be mad." Michael spoke to the desktop.

Jeremy tripped on the legs of his chair as he stood. "Fuck yeah, I'm mad!"

"And, uh..." Michael said, relieved for the incessant chatter of the freedom-bound class covering up... whatever this was,  "I kinda needed more detail. You never really told me anything helpful."

"Anything _helpful_? Oh my God." Jeremy's voice shook. Michael couldn't tell if it was with anger or something else. A slightly sadistic part of him hoped it was the latter. He was sick of feeling like a victim. "What are you trying to do, diagnose me? I'm fine. Look at me. I'm happy."

Michael looked at him. He scanned Jeremy up and down, arms thrown open, non-graffitied backpack open at his feet. New striped shirt, well-fitting blue sweatshirt instead of the old tattered cardigan, decent posture, hair mussed but at least looking like it had been washed in the last week. "Yeah," Michael said.

Jeremy's arms fell. "What?"

Michael shrugged. "You're just still acting weird," he said.

It wasn't Cool Kid Jeremy, that was true. This Jeremy wasn't insulting anyone or adding fake swagger or plugging shitty rap artists he'd never listened to. But it was still... off. This Jeremy was happy. Confident. Dating a sweet girl and comfortable in the middle of the pack. Still socializing with both Michael and Jake Dillinger. Talking with Chloe Valentine about the one time he drank shampoo. He was like a walking oxymoron.

Jumbo Shrimp. It works but it doesn't. It's not supposed to be both.

Jeremy ran a hand through his hair, turning his attention to his own stack of school supplies and sliding them into his bag. "They let me out of the hospital," he said. "I'm not even going to therapy anymore."

"You just started," Michael said.

"So?"

"You should really go to therapy." It didn't matter what Jeremy thought of his mental state. There were professionals for a reason.

He zipped his backpack. "I told you. I'm fine."

Michael shook his head, staring down at his friend. "Then why are you still acting like this?" He asked.

Jeremy glanced up. "Like what?"

"Never mind," Michael said, averting his gaze.

Throwing his backpack on, Jeremy stood. "No, Michael. Like what?"

Fuck it. "Like a dick, okay?" Michael said. "I didn't ask you because I knew you'd be a dick about it."

"Wow. Okay."

Michael shoved his hands into his hoodie pocket. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine," Jeremy said.

His fingers closed around a ziplock. He still had Jenna's 'present' in there. "It's clearly not."

Jeremy laughed, short and bitter. "No, I get it. You don't trust me anymore." He pressed his lips together. "That's fine. I was awful. I get it."

Michael shook his head. "Jeremy, I—" The bell rang.

"I gotta go. See you later."

"Jeremy!" And before he could do anything about it, he disappeared into the current of the hallways.

Michael's grip tightened on his plastic-enclosed breath mint. Fuck everything.

"That went well," said Inner-Jeremy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's been like two months, but I tend to procrastinate things that are hard to write by churning out fluffy oneshots. I did warn you guys.  
> I couldn't for the life of me find good sources for some of these Squips, which is why Jake's went unnamed and Christine couldn't remember hers. I know it was originally Hillary Clinton but that they changed it for Off-Broadway and I couldn't remember what they changed it to. If memory serves, no one ever told us what Jenna's is? So there's that, too.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I adore feedback, so please feel free to tell me what you think!
> 
> Edit: Much thanks to Rognik's comment in helping me with Squips--I have fixed Christine's email!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What the fuck are you doing?" Inner Jeremy asked.  
> "I—I don't know," Michael admitted, looking at the now exposed mint. "What does it look like?"  
> Jeremy's voice was silent as Michael tipped the bag's contents into his hand. It was so tiny, so insignificant. Funny how a thing so small had been weighing him down so much. The lack of mass in his hand only added more to his sternum. There was a black hole starting to spiral in his lungs, sucking his life into an inescapable void.  
> "We should split it," Inner Jeremy finally said.  
> Michael's smirk was tight. "I don't think it works like that."

It was from Japan: a gray, oblong pill with a quantum nano-tech central processing unit inside. The computer traveled through the bloodstream and implanted in the brain, creating a new neural pathway and tapping into visual and auditory nerves to create a virtual coach. 

It told you what to do.

And sometimes it would punish you if it didn't like what you were doing.

It was just a prototype, and probably hella illegal. Scratch that—definitely super fucking illegal. You could only get them from a shady guy in the back of the shoe store. No instruction manual. No warranty. No refunds.

Every recorded incident of them resulted in institutionalization or hospitalization, occasionally with some arson thrown in along the way. 

The Squips were a drug and a virus. They had ruined at least a handful of internet strangers' lives, messed with at least eight more from a high school in New Jersey, and that wasn't even counting the probability of thousands of others under-the-radar. Calling them bad news would be like calling a rabid wolf a puppy. 

And there was one sitting in the palm of Michael's hand. 

He hated it. He hated everything it stood for, everything it could do, everything it did. Such a tiny thing for him to hate it so much. If he wasn't careful, he'd lose it in his bedsheets.

Michael was huddled in his basement bedroom. Lava lamp light danced eerily on insulation-padded walls and ceiling, sending strange shadows through light smoke haze. Knockoff 8-bit music looped forgotten from an ancient TV, blinking with the words "Game Over." Michael eyed the Squip balefully. It was still nestled in its cocaine bag. Harmless. Innocent. 

What the hell was he doing? He'd seen firsthand the sort of shit these things could cause, and he'd sworn to himself that he wouldn't mess with it. He liked where he stood. Nothing wrong with maintaining an aesthetic. Loser just fit the brand.

His fingers twitched around the pill. 

Michael fumbled with his phone, unlocking it and opening up the messages. The last text was one to Jeremy's dad—over a month old. "There's an ambulance. Meet us at the hospital," and the rest was radio silence. His last (one-sided) conversation with Jeremy was a series of "I'm back. Where'd you go?" and "People are saying some kid had a seizure. Are you okay?" and "It's been an hour. I'm just gonna assume you got lost. Find your own way home,” followed by a few days of “Where are you?” and “Why are you ignoring me?” and “Dude, please just talk to me.”

Well, then there was also one from the end of October: "Fuck you."

He glared back at the Squip. It didn't do anything except sit there, looking for all the world like a Wintergreen Tic-Tac.

Well, not quite. He'd googled it and apparently Wintergreen Tic-Tacs were—get this—mint green. No shit. Why did everyone who saw a Squip assume it was a candy product that wasn't even the same color as it? No fucking clue. If he sat down and thought about it, maybe it would turn out that everyone who had called it that had already taken one and it was part of its self-defense or whatever, but he didn't have a large enough sample to be sure.

(For all that he hated journalism, he'd been thriving in statistics, and surveys were basically the same.)

Michael's phone was silent and cold in his hand, glowing with bleak light. Jeremy's lack of response glared up at him, marked with a mocking, Read: Dec. 5. 

It had taken him over a month to read the text. He hadn't looked at it until after his Squip was long gone and winter winds were starting to blow. Michael shivered and wondered vaguely why he'd gone out for frozen yogurt with Brooke in this weather. He'd been chilled to the bone since.

Or maybe that was because of something else.

Before he could question it, Michael texted Jeremy.

"Sorry about today. You wanna come kick Level Nine's ass over the weekend?" He considered adding something about talking it out or making it up to him, but he didn't know how to phrase it. He didn't know what he wanted out of this. He was just sick of Solo Mode, and wanted to slaughter some zombies the old-fashioned way.

Can't beat a two player game by yourself. 

Jeremy's response came surprisingly quickly, considering it was well-past midnight and they'd been avoiding eye contact since their class that morning. "No, sorry. I have a date."

It shouldn't have made Michael's throat tighten. Jeremy couldn't always hang out with him. That was fine. He had a girlfriend and a life outside of Michael now. It was fine. It was probably healthy. 

But a selfish shadow of his brain considered texting Christine—she'd left her number in the post-post script of her email—and telling her to cancel. He knew it probably wasn't even an actual date. Christine had just roped Jeremy into listening to her Sweeney Todd stuff for the millionth time, and Jeremy was going along because he had to make his girlfriend happy.

Oh, who was he kidding? Jeremy would take Christine over him any day. Hell, he took a supercomputer drug and flipped things on their heads specifically  _ because _ he chose Christine over Michael. 

Michael's petty ass sent "K" in reply. 

He found himself wishing that he had more weed. He'd smoked his wallet dry since that day at the mall, and he'd used the last of his stash to send a smoky film over his eyes, but the high was fading. 

Desperate and not-high-enough were not a good combination, judging by the fact that he was staring at the Squip again, now curled loosely in his fist. 

"You're allowed to be selfish sometimes." They were Jenna's words, but it was Inner Jeremy who spoke. 

"You'd be the one to know," Michael grumbled. Yes, it was weird to talk to himself—to insult the a person who wasn't even actually there—but he was high and alone, so who cared?

Oh, God. He was alone.

He wasn’t so thick-headed that he hadn’t noticed before. He'd been lonely and desperate since Jeremy vanished on him. The lava light and pot reek and sitting alone in his room were nothing new—they were his sanctuary away from watching his best friend turn into his worst nightmare. So what if they were also a cave-like time capsule of every reason he had to miss him? He was used to pining over Jeremy's company. Hell, it was the status quo. 

And it's not like he expected to find new friends at this point. Maybe college would mix things up, but he had avoided expanding his social circle for a reason. He could be friendly and chill, but he didn't need to try to get buddy-buddy with the likes of Rich Goranski. Yeah, he was an extreme example, but not an uncommon one. Michael was the stoner loner with big clunky headphones who wouldn't make eye contact unless he had to. He avoided the brunt of the bullying by flying below the radar, but it meant that no one was about to catch him on the friendship scanner either. 

Michael knew this. He'd come to terms with it back in middle school, and he'd been reintroduced to the terms recently. This wasn't new and it wasn't surprising.

But it was starting to sink in a little more.

He thought of Jeremy and his new friends. Jenna said he rode Jeremy's coat-tails, and she was absolutely fucking spot-on. Hell, even though he'd talked to most of the popular kids at this point, he'd done it for Jeremy. They weren't Michael's friends, they were  _ Jeremy's. _ Michael just had to get used to the fact that he was no longer the only one on that list. 

That is, if he was even  _ on _ the list anymore. Everything he'd done to save Jeremy, everything he was still trying to do to get his head out of his ass, and he wasn't even sure he was on the fucking list.

Not that Jeremy appreciated the shit he did for him anyway. It wouldn't matter to him  _ why _ Michael was prodding around in his life because, from the looks of it, he didn't exactly want him there anymore.

Michael had gotten used to being lonely, but he didn't like the gnawing sensation of being alone. 

Seriously, this sucked ass, this slow resignation to dying forgotten in a junk food weed den. It was pathetic, but if Jeremy didn't want him, who would? 

He caught himself cracking the ziplock seal. 

Michael froze. He wasn't really about to do this, was he? Two wrongs don't make a right. He couldn't fix his Squip issue  _ with _ a Squip, but it was really fucking tempting, even with his brain screaming at him, saying it was a terrible, horrible, dumbass option. 

"What the fuck are you doing?" Inner Jeremy asked.

"I—I don't know," Michael admitted, looking at the now exposed mint. "What does it look like?" 

Jeremy's voice was silent as Michael tipped the bag's contents into his hand. It was so tiny, so insignificant. Funny how a thing so small had been weighing him down so much. The lack of mass in his hand only added more to his sternum. There was a black hole starting to spiral in his lungs, sucking his life into an inescapable void.

"We should split it," Inner Jeremy finally said. 

Michael's smirk was tight. "I don't think it works like that."

He didn't know why his brain was spitting dialogue from all those months ago except that it had been the last time before things fell apart. The point of no return when the screws came loose.

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. 

Michael was snapped out of his trance-like resignation when the pill touched his tongue. Before he had even the slightest chance to taste the minty coating, he was spitting it back into the bag, retching and shivering. It wasn't even that bad—it seemed like a Tic-Tac, after all—but his heart was in his throat and his pulse thundered in his ears. 

Michael choked himself to dizziness before his senses slowly returned. Goddamnit. He couldn't even control his desperation enough to not go kamikaze. 

Alternatively, he was so pathetic he couldn't bring himself to fix his shit when a potential change was bunched in his trembling fist. He let it tumble through his fingers to tangle in the mess of blankets he was drowning in. He shoved his glasses off his face to press the heels of his hands into his eyes. They throbbed in his skull.

Fuck this. 

Michael forced himself out of bed, leaving behind both his phone and the sticky, spit-covered Squip. 

He was out of weed and he had no one to talk to. At least he could slaughter the virtual undead and blow out his eardrums. He clamped his headphones over his ears, blasting whatever shit showed up on shuffle as he did his best to let his deflated bean bag swallow him. 

Several months of his moods had carved a spot for him here. He would probably go deaf soon enough, and he had started to wear a lovely dent into the polyester sack. The digital demons onscreen growled and lunged, and Michael blasted them away absentmindedly. He wanted desperately to focus on the twinge of his fingers against the familiar joystick and buttons, but he bit his lip and let the music beat into his skull, and none of it helped.

The Squip would keep bugging him until he did something about it. He  _ could _ flush it, saving everyone from the possibility of another apocalypse attempt. He could duck his head down and be content with Internet socialization until Jeremy got his head out of his ass. Michael could leave it all where it was, with the bottle of Mountain Dew sealed tightly on his bedside table. Or—

Or he could actually try to take initiative for once. He wasn't making jack shit progress on his own, and he had an answer. Right there. Glaring holes in the back of his head even through the music rattling his skull. He had the dungeon key nestled in a plastic bag. Yes, using it would plunge him further into fuckery—more dark corners and twisted enemies and a far greater chance of getting a KO and Game Over. But using it was also the only way to progress through the game. The Big Boss doesn't show up in the plot equivalent of the Green Hill Zone; he would have to collect the Chaos Emeralds. He couldn't dump Bowser into lava if he hadn't even reached the castle yet. 

He was allowed to be selfish sometimes.

Except he wasn't sure which option was more selfish. On the one hand, Michael would never in a million years make himself deal with a Squip personally. It had screwed him over enough from inside Jeremy's head. God knows he didn't need one of his own. He wasn't about to put himself in danger for that asshole's sake.

On the other hand, Michael wanted Jeremy back. He wanted to know how it worked so he could undo its shit. Yeah, it was awful of him. Jeremy was happy. He'd gotten everything he'd been fighting for, and Michael wanted to rip that success apart at the seams, just so he could have his best friend back. 

Okay, so maybe he did know which was more selfish. 

He didn't even realize he'd been lost in thought until the zombie horde flooded over his avatar and the game controller quaked in his hands. The music making his ears bleed was starting to add pressure behind his eyes and to his lungs. He breathed hard against it, but only felt more and more smothered.

This wasn't working. He couldn't go on like this. 

“For fuck’s sake," Michael muttered, throwing his headphones clattering to the basement floor and rounding on the pill in his bed. It hadn't moved. He wasn't sure why he thought it might've. His hands vibrated as he snatched the bright green bottle from the nightstand and unscrewed the cap. Breathing hard through his nose, Michael took a swig. Carbonation popped around his tongue.

The pill followed, slid between his lips and into the cesspool of radioactive piss in his mouth. It floated, hiding amidst sugar and caffeine. If not for the hint of mint, he might be able to pretend he wasn't doing this. 

Vomit threatened its way up his esophagus. Michael swallowed it down, taking the soda and poison pill with it. 

And then electricity shot across his skin. 

It took Michael a moment to catch his breath. His knees had given out and he'd tumbled to the floor, knocking against his bed frame. He was shaking as a current ran through his blood. 

He swallowed, pulse beating in his face. "Hello?" His voice vibrated.

Silence. 

Michael’s mind raced. He could still probably make himself throw up or something. He still had time to get it out before it was too late. The lighting in his fingertips was the only thing grounding him as he went lightheaded in fear.

When Jeremy took his, he’d seemed normal for a few minutes. He thought it was a rip-off, and Michael left him alone. When he came back from Spencer's with his Hi-C, Jeremy was gone. Christine and Jake of all people came up to him, asking if he knew what was wrong. All he did know was that his best friend was gone and a few frantic mall cops were on their walkie-talkies, going on about a teenager screaming in the food court. 

So where was Michael's seizure? Where was the calibration message and nerve damage? Where was Keanu Reeves's voice telling him to stand up straighter?

Wait, no. He wouldn't have Keanu's voice, would he? The lack of response was starting to convince him that the sparks in his flesh were from his anxiety, and despite the all-consuming fear, he  _ was _ really curious. Jeremy had Keanu. Christine got a government lady. Brooke had one of the Olsen twins. Who would Michael get?

His first thought was Bob Marley. His music was laid-back and bopping. He could make Michael everything he already pretended to be. But of course, it wasn't much for improvement in that case. 

Maybe it would be the Doctor. Michael wasn't been super up-to-date on New Who, but he could see himself doing whatever Tom Baker or Peter Davison told him to. Or Ben Kenobi. Not Obi-Wan, as much as he was totally into Ewan McGregor, but Ben, who had a comforting presence and would probably be able to Jedi Mind Trick him into whatever he wouldn't agree to anyway. 

Logic dictated that it would probably be a celebrity or character or something. If it was going to be convincing, it would have to be accurate, and notable pop culture figures left open the infinite Internet database for research and replication purposes. Sure, Chloe's had been a reflection of herself, so it wasn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but Michael knew he was full of bullshit, so mimicking him would be a dumb move on the computer's part.

Maybe a video game character? GLaDOS or Wheatley or the narrator from the Stanley Parable, even though he wasn't anything other than a voice. Of course, for all Michael knew, he'd get Navi and want to get out a flyswatter to crush his Squip for being annoying before it had even started trying to reform him.

Tom Servo could just take a shit on his life. It could convince him how much of a joke he was. It wouldn't be as effective without Crow though, and it wouldn't make much sense for his Squip to have to be two characters. 

Michael looked around his room. Still no menacing hologram. Still no unusual voice, and still no punishing shocks up his spine. Just the clammy numbness of his skin, the steadily looping video game death tones, and grotesque mood-lit shadows over scattered eBay trinkets—memorabilia lunch boxes and bobbleheads and special edition Rubix cubes—and movie posters. His eyes landed on the painted flame trails of a certain DeLorean.

Everything The Matrix had been for Jeremy, Back to the Future was for Michael. He watched it religiously, over and over. The soundtrack was classic, and thematically, it hit him at home. Things are the way they are for a reason. You can change the way things were to alter the way they are, as long as you're smart enough and brave enough and don't let the bullies get you down. 

His heart sank as he realized whose voice he'd start hearing in his head, and it wasn't Michael J. Fox. 

Doc Brown had given Marty the power to change his present by changing the past. He would give Michael the power to change things by changing himself. Knowing what the voice would be didn't make him any less nauseous about the idea of it showing up. 

Except it didn't. Michael paced and shouted and cried. He scratched at his skin and did everything he could not to throw up. He slouched and even tried to jerk off (ineffectively, seeing as he was so keyed-up) in hopes of making it mad so it would just fucking talk to him already, but his mind was silent. Even Inner Jeremy had decided to call it quits for the night.

Eventually, he just crashed, and his dreams were as frantic as his panic.

It started with Jeremy, because everything seemed to start with Jeremy lately. He was standing twitching in the middle of the mall food court, a flickering Matrix Keanu floating behind him. Michael stared with horror as fire shot out from around them. He was in a bathtub, weighed down by a blanket of beer cans, unable to move as the heat increased. "Get out of my way, loser," Jeremy and his Squip said in unison, and the mall dissolved into flames. 

The inferno turned into the trail of a speeding time machine with Michael behind the wheel, watching a speedometer slowly tick up towards eighty-eight. Eighty-four. Eighty-five. Eighty-six. Eighty-seven. Eighty-seven. Eighty-seven. Eighty-seven. Lightning crackled around him, shooting across the console. His hands seized hot against the wheel that twisted and melted in his hands. He his foot slammed the gas to the floor as he careened into a building, still stuck at eighty-seven. 

And then he was being pulled from the burning wreckage by... Spider-Man? Yeah, Spider-Man was yanking him through the sky as Michael held on for dear life. There was a thrill to his terror, but even in dreams where he was being held by a spandex-clad superhero, he was not a fan of heights. Spider-Man laughed, something distant and garbled as Michael's curiosity got the best of him and his hand drifted up to take off his mask. Jeremy's wavy brown hair tumbled out across his face. Spider-Jeremy grinned at him, before smile warped into smirk. His eyes turned electric and he dropped Michael onto the city streets below.

He landed back in his basement, out of breath and tangled in strings of spider silk. The ceiling opened to a starry sky, where Jeremy swung by, laughing at him. The moon shone in a Cheshire Cat sneer. Spider-Jer landed on the crescent and even from that distance, Michael distinctly saw him flip him off. He dissolved into stars, and the moon inflated, before a serpentine dragon wearing Michael's glasses soared up and swallowed the full moon whole, plunging the dreamscape into darkness.

The lights came up on a Squipped stage, with Jeremy restrained in his lap and Brooke and Chloe leering down at them, eyes and voices soulless and in sync. Circuit lights zipped around them, congealing into Keanu's haughty glare, before he shuddered with golden electricity and grew a bowling pin beak. Crow T. Robot's head swiveled, flickering back and forth between solid and silhouette. Poisonous light gleamed from inside ping pong ball eyes, as he leaned down and inhaled, pulling Michael deeper.

And then he was standing in the middle of a spinning roller rink, where disco lights splattered on spray paint walls and faceless skaters as the ground rumbled and rolled beneath him. Jeremy stood there, spindly limbs quivering on slippery wheels. He was mouthing something, but the words got lost in the haze of thunderous dance music, so he shook his head and reached for Michael. He cupped his cheeks in shaking hands and kissed him, soft and desperate. It barely registered through the swimming in his head, but Michael melted into the tender heat, letting his subconscious lead him until their wheeled feet started to slide and careen out from under them, and Michael was falling to drown in a vat of bubbling acid the color of a nuclear reactor. Zombies closed in on the acid cauldron. One of them ripped its head off and let it topple into the acid. Christine's undead maw gaped open at him as she fizzled into blood red ooze, spreading to change the color of the entire vat. 

The redness bled into a hellscape of fire and brimstone. On a pedestal of skulls stood the cafeteria table where Jenna had given him the Squip. She stood there again, arm outstretched, this time with both a Wintergreen Tic-Tac and a blackened, half-empty bottle of Mountain Dew. "Your whole life will flip," she said, her voice layered over with electricity. Jenna laughed and vanished into a cloud of smoke, leaving Michael alone in a crumbling cavern, where flames licked the walls and furious pounding sounded against the walls and behind his eyes. Sparks danced around him, spreading like stars into an endless sky. 

Michael looked down from the stratosphere onto his own personal Hell. He beat his wings and flew past Jeremy, who was perched again on the moon. Landing next to him, they sat in silence for a moment. It was cold. Finally, Michael said "Fuck you," before Jeremy smiled sadly and the world went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here I say, with the sinister grin of a darkly pleased writer, "Uh oh!"  
> Look at this! I updated without waiting two months! Don't get too used to it.  
> Yes, I am aware that the dream sequence is heavy-handed. Yes, Michael might comment on it next chapter. 
> 
> I adore feedback, so please feel free to tell me what you think!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The elephant in the room was, of course, that there wasn't anything else in the room with him.  
> ...  
> Wait, what?

Well that was a bit much. Michael woke up slowly, stuck in that weird place between dreaming and awake where he felt like he was drowning in tar. His limbs were heavy, almost made of lead. He was too hot and too cold all at once, the back of his neck sticky with clammy sweat. He blinked open his crusted eyes, squinting against the glare of morning sunlight through the window well. Michael's hair was lank and greasy across his forehead, his scalp itchy with dirt. His glasses were askew on his face, having spent the night half-crushed in his pillow. His wrist was asleep where it had been bent oddly.

That dream was wild. Michael wasn't one to care about interpreting his dreams, because usually they were just regurgitations of his day-to-day life mixed with whatever game or movie he'd been binging. This one was that too, but he'd also like to have a word with whichever knockoff Sandman character had decided to make his nightmare cartoonishly symbolic. He'd seriously debate doing a quick Google dream dictionary if not for the fact that the vision was slipping through his fingers like a mirage just as the elephant in the room was becoming a clearer picture in the desert steam.

The elephant in the room was, of course, that there wasn't anything else in the room with him.

Wait, what?

Michael, still stiff and groggy, lifted himself into a sitting position to stare around the basement. Nothing had changed except for the dust particles swirling in the beam of morning light. The TV still flickered with his video game death, and the only sign of Doc Brown was trapped in a digital code on the DVD tucked away on his movie shelf.

"Hello?" Michael's voice scratched and caught in his throat.

Nothing.

"What, are you shy?"

Silence.

"Okay, fuck you too, then," he grumbled, dragging himself out of bed. It was Saturday, but that didn't mean he was about to lie around and let it sneak up on him. If there was a Squip waiting to show up, it would just have to make a scene.

He wished he'd thought for even a moment to ask how long it took to activate, or if it made a point of announcing its presence, but even with incredibly limited information, this felt wrong. Everyone who drank the Pansy Serum for the Play had turned total zombie long before the end of the act. Hell, Jeremy took his and left Michael alone within fifteen minutes, so...

So shouldn't something really be happening after so many hours?

"Chill out." Inner Jeremy's voice made him jump; he was expecting something more foreign. "You didn't want it in the first place. Isn't this better?"

And Michael knew he was right. Hell, Inner Jeremy _was_ still just his brain trying to compartmentalize, but it didn't ease the knot in his gut.

He couldn’t just sit there, so Michael was going to the mall. He didn't know why. Honestly, he didn't care. He had nothing to do and no one to do it with except Inner Jeremy and a Squip that was taking its sweet time. At least he could pretend to have purpose instead of wallowing in his basement and trying to ignore the desire to throw up. Maybe he'd go yell at the shady stock dude behind Payless. He was someone tangible to take his frustration out on, unlike a since-deleted Keanu Reeves or the stubbornly silent Doc Brown.

Okay, sure. Maybe it would be a different Christopher Lloyd role. Or just the actor himself, but that wouldn't resonate the same way and it would honestly be pretty stupid. Like yeah, Michael knew he'd played Fester in The Addams Family movies, but that didn't mean he'd find him convincing like that. If Michael were to design a line of mind controlling take-over-the-world supercomputers, the first thing he'd do would be to program them to pick the most persuasive form they could. It would be the easiest way to prevent rebellion.

Oh God, he really hoped it wouldn't try to take over the world. He didn't need to stop _another_ apocalypse before he'd even gotten things back on track after the last one. Michael plopped himself down on a food court bench. When did he become a savior of the world? When did his life become reminiscent of a bad YA novel? Why didn't he at least get sick-ass powers to go with his apparent calling to kick some computer ass?

A kid toddled past him and waved. His mom glared at Michael when he waved back, and he considered flipping her off, but figured that wouldn't win him any brownie points. Instead, he imagined blasting her into ash with some sort of magical Mountain Dew Red ray and the kid cheering. How hard would it have been for the universe to give him X-Men abilities as compensation for all the shit it had thrown at him? Fucking—he could be so _cool,_ and it didn't matter if it was just him against the world because it would be easier to hide his secret identity that way.

"Who are you kidding?" Inner Jeremy asked.

Michael sighed. Who _was_ he kidding? He was just a normal teenage hooligan who got the brunt of the helicopter parent glares because he loitered around the mall in an oversized hoodie and blasted music with _naughty words._ Of course, even that wasn't quite right. To be a real troublemaker, he needed a gang. He needed a gaggle of rowdy teens with whom he could laugh and shout naughty words and generally have a riot of a good time. Start a riot. Start a fire. A fire where he wouldn't be left to escape from a tile oven.

There wasn't much chaos he could cause all on his own.

Maybe he could be a super villain. That would be fun. Michael Mell: scourge of the school. He could fly in on homemade rocket shoes and blast away at all of his bullies—the so-called friends he wasn't even sure he fucking wanted—and make them pay for making him suffer. Make them pay for every teasing remark and half-thrown punch and vandalized backpack and burning building and low-brow insult.

Out of his way, _losers._

Inner Jeremy scoffed. "Yeah, right. You're not that badass."

Michael’s heart sank. "If I wanted to be mocked, I'd call up the Squip, thanks," he muttered. Michael wasn't an idiot. He knew he was too much of a softie. Hell, he hadn't even been able to ask for— _demand_ —an apology from Jeremy until it was almost too late.

"...Dude, I don't think it's coming."

Huh?

"The Squip," Jeremy's voice explained. "I think Jenna scammed you."

"You thought Rich scammed you, and look what happened." Michael was vaguely aware that he was talking to himself in public, but he also didn’t really care. Everyone already thought he was a weirdo. What more harm could this do?

Oh, fuck everything.

Michael slipped his headphones off his neck to clamp firmly over his ears. Maybe he'd be able to just blast his brains out or something. Maybe it could give the Squip an alarm clock or maybe it could shake it out of his head so he didn't need to worry about it anymore. A dormant volcano was like the calm before the storm. He didn't know when it would erupt, or if it even would, but it wasn't extinct yet, and even a hypothetical could tend to send lava thrumming in his veins.

He scrolled through his new and improved "expanding his music taste" playlists with all their creative titles: '80s, '90s, Jeremy's Pop Shit, Nostalgia, Bops, Jams, Mellow, Bangers, Reggae, Punch Something. He wanted to punch something, he did, but he also felt vaguely like crying. He'd had a playlist for that, once upon a time. He basically lived in it for several months, but his recent attempts to move on had left it in the iTunes trash bin to decompose into a pile of code.

Just as his thumb hovered over the first track on "Mellow," a strikingly familiar laugh pierced the air and his head jerked up.

So Jeremy _was_ actually on a date. He and Christine strolled by not even ten feet away, clasped hands swinging between them. Jeremy was smiling, his real, genuine, Jeremy smile that Michael wasn't sure he'd seen in public since elementary school. Since puberty, Jeremy had always been secret smiles or strained smiles or small smiles or sleazy Squip smiles. Not this: bright and radiant and comfortable.

Happy.

His hair curled around his ears with all the ruffled grace of an excited puppy and his eyes were screwed up just a little, his face scrunched with the force of his laughter. His cheeks were painted with rosy blush and he seemed to be nearly floating with how springy his steps were. He... He looked like a different person. Not PTSD-ridden-husk different, but _different._ Good different. Better different. The kind of different where he was bleeding light.

The kind of different that made Michael think maybe he was the one being an asshole. Jeremy was Happy. Jeremy was Better. Maybe Jeremy was Right.

Until his gaze flickered to Michael, sitting on his bench like a lump on a log, and something twitched in his jaw and in his gaze. Michael averted his eyes, going back to his music.

He didn't start any, though, opting for eavesdropping potential over his own emotional sanity when Christine guided her boyfriend to a nearby cafeteria table.

The same table where Michael had sat and watched Jeremy turn the tables with a single swallow.

Jesus.

He couldn't hear them from this far off. They spoke in hushed tones, probably for the sake of talking in public, no matter how shady it seemed to Michael. His headphones, even when silent, still provided a muffled barrier against all but the louder sounds. Here's hoping he was decent at charades.

Jeremy had his back to him, spine straight, shoulders back. He was tense, and lately that meant reverting to his conditioned movements. Perfect posture.

Christine had noticed almost immediately that something was wrong. She leaned across the table towards him, brow creased, grasping his hand, as if trying to coax an answer out of him. Michael watched her specifically. If she could just look three inches to the left, she’d see Michael and know what was wrong. He wasn’t sure if he wanted her to. He wasn’t sure if she’d take his side or Jeremy’s.

Obviously Jeremy’s. Even though Christine had told Michael he was her friend, he’d had two conversations and a single email exchange with her. Jeremy was her fucking boyfriend. It was no contest.

“I thought you didn’t like Christine anyway,” Inner Jeremy said.

“Shut up,” Michael mumbled. He had mixed feelings about her. Clearly, she treated Jeremy well. She was still looking at him with such warmth. Such kindness. Jeremy deserved kindness. After years of bullying, the aftermath of his parents’ fighting and his dad’s prolonged shutdown, and especially after months of electronic torment, Jeremy deserved good things.

No matter how Michael felt about Christine, Jeremy deserved her.

“I’d say the universe owed me one,” Inner Jeremy mocked, a perfect facsimile of Jeremy’s biting bathroom comment.

“I said shut up.” Apparently, he scolded loudly enough for Christine to glance over. Something twitched in her smile: a flicker of comprehension.

She turned back to Jeremy. Michael couldn’t read lips for shit, but he could tell when his name came up because Jeremy flinched like he’d been shocked.

Electricity tingled along the back of Michael’s neck. Right. He was the only one who could conceivably be zapped right now. He was the one who—supposedly—had an actually active Squip.

But of course, if he did, wouldn’t it be trying harder to get him to fight back? Wouldn’t it be lecturing him on how much of a pushover he was being and that he should just go up and tell Jeremy how he felt?

Did he even know how he felt?

“What, are you jealous?” asked Inner Jeremy.

“Shut the _fuck_ up.” No, he wasn’t _jealous_ of Jeremy. Yeah, it would be nice to have some direction in his life. Yeah, it would be nice to not feel so conflicted about everything, but still. Jeremy was a shithole traitor as far as Michael was concerned. He didn’t feel jealous, he felt abandoned, and he didn’t need any goddamn Squip to help him realize that.

He just didn’t much like admitting it.

Christine didn’t seem to be making much progress in getting Jeremy to socialize. In fact, judging by the way she was bouncing in her seat, she’d given up the issue to talk about some theatre crap again. Michael didn’t care. If Jeremy didn’t want to talk to him, that was fine. He didn’t want to talk to Jeremy either, especially if he was going to keep being an asshole.

Beginning to feel like a creep and a stalker, Michael decided to wander. He could wallow somewhere else, thank you very much. No need to third wheel from the sidelines when he had a whole fucking mall to explore and feel shitty in.

Maybe he _would_ go piss off the Payless stock boy. Could get his ears boxed in, but at least it was better than feeling like there was a fist slowly closing around his windpipe.

He was so caught up in his meanderings, music now drilling into his skull and a certain mistiness (that was definitely _not_ tears, shut up) clouding his eyes that he slammed into a phone-wielding pedestrian.

It was the last straw.

Michael’s headphones hit the ground first, clattering on grimy tile, and his knees followed. Lovely. Pushed to the ground by his own inability to walk in a straight line. The tears burned hotter in his throat now, and a sob threatened its way out.

“Shit, Michael, sorry!” Jenna said.

He didn’t answer, instead focusing on the ache in his joints and in his chest. Focusing on not letting his miserable meltdown break the surface, because once the floodgates opened, there was no way he’d be able to stop. Everything boiled inside him. Everything. Every anxiety, every sadness, every awful thing he’d been bottling up for so long.

Michael held his breath, choking down Everything. He couldn’t do this here. Not now. Not in the middle of the mall with Jenna still trying to get his attention to apologize.

“Get up,” Jeremy’s voice said. Michael’s skin buzzed. His vision was starting to flicker. His face continued to swell with tears.

“Stop being such a wimp.”

Michael gagged.

“Get your ass off the ground.” The words came with tingling, crippling shame that jolted through Michael’s skeleton. Jesus _Christ._ He was nearly a fucking _adult._ He had to get his shit together.

Maybe that was his superpower. Forget the vintage soda blasts, he could apparently guilt-trip himself into _not_ throwing a complete tantrum in public even as he felt like his entire body might explode like an overfilled water balloon.

Or, well. Into throwing less of a tantrum.

Jenna was still looking over him like some kind of hungry vulture, waiting to see if he was actually dead before swooping in for the feast. “It’s fine,” Michael managed, shoving himself to his feet. He was wobbly and his knees stung. The heels of his hands felt bruised and his headphones sat tumbled a few feet away.

“Are you okay?” Jenna asked. Okay, so maybe more of a mother hen than a buzzard, but his point about her obnoxious hovering still stood.

“You’re fine,” Inner Jeremy assured him.

“I’m fine.”

Biting her lip, Jenna collected the headphones, still playing tinny sounding music. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re fine,” the voice repeated.

“Nothing,” Michael said. “Nothing’s wrong.” He wasn’t sure why he was so against Jenna’s sympathy. All he’d wanted for weeks now was for someone to hold out a hand and actually help him. Offer him a connection not tainted by new dating lives or Post-Traumatic Squip Disorder.

And here Jenna was, literally reaching out to hand him his headphones. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Because if there’s anything I can do—”

“This is her fault,” Jeremy’s voice said.

What?

“Jenna gave you the Squip,” he explained.

Was… Was that it? Yeah, he’d been a mess since lunch that day, but… Was he really that shallow deep down? Besides, it’s not like it worked anyway. It still hadn’t fucking shown up, and Michael was pretty close to accepting that it just wouldn’t at this point.

“She got you freaked out over _nothing,”_ Inner Jeremy insisted, indignant on his behalf. Guess he _was_ that bitter and shallow.

“I don’t need any more help from _you,”_ Michael said. He didn’t need any more help. He didn’t need any more useless solutions.

Jenna looked at him like he’d spoken a different language. “Huh?”

“I took it,” he said. “The—the Squip.”

“Oh.” Jenna stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets and trained her eyes somewhere over his shoulder. “Well, that would explain why you’re—”

“You ripped me off.”

She met his gaze, jaw clenching. _“Excuse_ me?”

“It didn’t do shit. You gave me a broken one.”

Her brow creased. “Michael—”

“I thought you were trying to help!” His whole body flared with heat. Fire crackled along his skin and he felt his fists clench around nothing. He wasn’t entirely sure where this sudden anger had come from. Maybe his still simmering tears had decided to burn into fury, maybe he was still fucked up enough from the way Jeremy’s eyes had turned steely when he glanced at him—the way he’d drawn back like he was burned when Christine even mentioned Michael’s name.

“I _was,”_ Jenna insisted. He knew she was. He really did. But…

“You made me freak out over nothing!” But being angry is cathartic sometimes. He needed to yell, and Jenna was right _here._

“Hey, dickhead,” she said with a sneer, all her Popular Bitch venom dripping from her voice, “you freaked out on your own. I never said you _had_ to take it, so stop being an ass.”

“It didn’t even work,” said Inner Jeremy.

“It didn’t even work,” Michael echoed.

“And I was supposed to know that, _how?”_ Jenna scrutinized him. He wasn’t sure what she was seeing—probably a desperate loser who couldn’t even have a civil conversation anymore—but nothing in her facade softened when she scolded, “Get over yourself, Mell. The world isn’t always out to get you.”

And with that, she swept off without a second glance, as if Michael wasn’t even there. As if he was dirt. Or shit. Or a bottom-of-the-pack stoner kid who wasn’t worth the time of day as far as her superior social standing was concerned.

“Yeah, well. It’s sure felt like it lately,” Michael said to no one. Some things never really changed.

“Suck it up,” Inner Jeremy said

“Whose side are you on?”

Not looking to cause even more of a scene by talking to himself, Michael put his headphones back on and walked home.

That was a waste of time. A waste of energy. He thought being in public would help him feel less trapped, but it just reminded him of how shitty everything was.

And after all that, the fucking Squip had been a dud all along.

But it was okay. He was fine. He apparently had to continually remind himself via his best friend’s voice because he was _that_ codependent and wouldn’t listen to his own, but it was all fine. Fine.

Or maybe it wasn’t.

The thing is, he wasn’t sure what else to do. Michael, as a matter of principle, didn’t dwell on shit.

He couldn’t really articulate it, because, to be perfectly frank, he didn’t really understand it. Yeah, sure, he knew he felt shitty. He knew he tended to live in a daze, grin and bear it, do everything he could to focus more on everyone else’s problems than his own. Theirs were more serious, anyway. So what if he dissociated and felt a vague need to cry occasionally? His best friend (and everyone else he’d talked to in the last while) had been possessed by a manipulative supercomputer, for fuck’s sake. He hadn’t, so logically he could manage. Just keep going. Don’t stall, don’t look back, eyes front, one foot in front of the other, just keep swimming.

“You know that’s not healthy,” Jeremy’s voice scolded in his head.

“Yeah, like _you_ know what healthy is,” Michael grumbled back. Jeremy had the _worst_ coping mechanisms, or at the very least, they were worlds worse than Michael’s were. Jeremy was the one who pinned all his happiness on a relationship with a girl he’d never talked to. Jeremy was the one who blew four hundred bucks on lab-created emotional abuse. Jeremy was the one who almost let himself get talked into fucking his way up the social ladder, the one who _had_ let himself get talked into bullying his way up. Jeremy was the one who nearly destroyed the school. What was a little situational avoidance compared to that?

“You’re the one who had a panic attack in a burning building.”

“Shut up,” Michael said. Halloween was a fluke. A bad day. He was _fine,_ really. Besides, that was Jeremy’s fault, too.

Honestly! When everything was actually going well in Michael’s life—when he wasn’t getting _abandoned_ in burning buildings—he was perfectly fine. Maybe a little stressed out by schoolwork, but what teenager wasn’t? And even if things weren’t sunshine and lollipops, who was he to impose on everyone else?

And hey, if he couldn’t even figure out why he felt shitty, there was no point paying it any mind. It’s not like he could fix a problem he couldn’t identify. No, it didn’t do anything to solve the numbness in his bones or the emptiness in his gut. It didn’t make him feel like he wanted to cry any _less,_ but fake it ‘till you make it. That was his motto. He couldn’t dwell on it. He couldn’t stop or look back, because if he did he would freeze. He couldn’t let himself think about deciphering the tangled mess of vague discomfort, because if he did he would have to pay attention to it. Have to understand it. Have to solve whatever shit was building up. Of course, he couldn’t really look forward either, because then he’d have to decide what the fuck he wanted out of life, and to know that, he would have to know how he felt about life in the present.

So. Don’t look at all. Don’t pay it any mind. Fake it ‘till you fucking make it.

Yes, there was a sort of gray, leaden starvation in his gut, gnawing about something he’d been ignoring his hunger for. Yes, he felt like he was stuck on a sinking lifeboat or teetering on the top of a skyscraper or sitting on the edge of a bathtub as screams built outside the doors and behind his eyes. No, he didn’t know if he had any better options. There was a fork in the road he didn’t want to be on in the first place, and he didn’t want to be on any of the new routes either. There was no point in getting off the road, because then he’d just be stuck. Not moving. Spinning in circles.

Just like he’d promised himself he’d never be.

So, yeah. Michael felt like shit. The idea of hotboxing in his basement for the rest of eternity was very appealing. Maybe if he got high enough, he’d forget he even had problems in the first place and could go back to not slowly dying in his attempts to save face, because there wouldn’t be face to save. He could actually be content and suave and just.

Fucking. He needed to chill.

He needed to _be_ chill.

The thought sent a different kind of chill through his blood. He’d never cared enough to change anything about how he acted or where he stood. He’d resented Jeremy for thinking he was better than him, for thinking he deserved better than what Michael knew they were both destined—and should’ve been resigned—to. That was all still true.

But he needed to cool it. There wasn’t even a Squip around to tell him that, it was just so painfully obvious with how painfully sucky he’d made everything lately. He needed to not think and not feel and not worry about what would happen when he didn’t. He needed to chill the fuck out. If impostor syndrome was a thing, well then Michael was starting to think he had it on like a social level. Maybe he’d just been pretending to be mature and confident and a good friend for so long. Maybe he wasn’t as comfortable in his own skin as he told people (including himself) he was.

Inner Jeremy seemed to approve of his spiral, and it only made the pit in his stomach worse. He told him—again—to shut up and fuck off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did warn you guys that I'd be really inconsistent with my updates.  
> I'm not sure what all to say about this. I had fun writing it. I wrote part of it while mid-existential crisis, so that was fun.  
> Michael is clearly not having much fun, but that's mostly the point, so it just makes it more fun for me. :)
> 
> I adore feedback, so please feel free to tell me what you think!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Didn’t have anything better to do, did you?” he asked around the lump in his throat.  
> Jeremy sighed. “What more do you want from me, man?”  
> “Make him leave,” Inner Jeremy repeated.  
> “I’m not sure,” Michael said.

Jeremy showed up uninvited two days later.

Michael had let himself ignore it. Had let himself wallow while he could. He spent Sunday in a coma, ignoring the gnawing in his bones and the whispers in his brain; he didn’t need to hear Jeremy’s voice right now, no matter what the source. Walking into school on Monday, he tried in vain to blend into the freshmen. He bowed his head to the crowd, huddled in the back of every classroom and attempting to beat the sadness out of his head with mind-numbing schoolwork. Lunch brought him to the library, where he’d been exactly once: the end of sophomore year to check out _The Great Gatsby_ for Jeremy because he’d been too caught up with family stuff… Legal stuff.

It was awful for him to think it, but he almost wished he could go back in time to then. Back to when their biggest issues were shitty mothers and custody hearings.

Back to when Jeremy’s whole mess went off the deep end and Michael’s biggest issue was being a shoulder to cry on.

Back to before pills and plays and Payless.

But that wasn’t fair. Not to Jeremy.

“Yeah, my dad _just_ got his butt off the couch. I don’t need to see that again.” Inner Jeremy had been talkative, but again, Michael was pissed at Jeremy. He didn’t care what he _or_ his voice said.

If Michael was learning to be selfish, he’d sure as hell like a disgraced nuclear physicist to show up and give him a fucking time machine already. The butterfly effect could suck his ass, Michael needed to be somewhere other than where he was, and getting in his car and driving upstate was sadly not on the table.

The library had been the one place he thought he could hide from his issues, but Jeremy seemed to follow him everywhere.

Which brought him back to his basement, where he’d been scared out of his skin mid-boss battle.

“I completely forgot this game existed.”

Michael whirled around, effectively fucking up his Art Attack. Jeremy hovered behind him, hands stuffed in his pockets, looking at the Paper Mario battle stage with a furrowed brow.

“I thought the last world was on the moon. What’s with the weird castle?”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Jeremy stared at the screen, where Mario’s health bar had started beeping as the controller buzzed violently. He gnawed at his lip. “Marilyn just _nailed_ you with lightning.”

“How did you get in my house?”

At that, Jeremy shot him a glance. “The key you gave me in sixth grade. Duh.”

Michael sighed, returning to the battle, where the Shadow Sirens had just killed his Yoshi and Doopliss was pulling his copycat move on Mario. This was bad. Not the game, per se. He had at least three Ultra Shrooms and another few Super Shrooms. There was a health box half a screen away as soon as he finished beating the shit out of Beldam and her cronies. Plus, he’d already completed the game four times.

Paper Mario was the least of his worries.

No, Jeremy settling into the other beanbag was bad.

“You could always tell him to leave,” Inner Jeremy said, except that was bad too. Michael didn’t want to see Jeremy. He didn’t want to deal with him or his tense, awkward looks. He didn’t want to deal with the conversation that obviously had to happen, but he also couldn’t make it go away. They had some serious shit to sift through.

And as much as Michael would rather go back in time and forget about it all from the comfort of the sixteenth century or wherever the fuck he landed, he needed to do this. He needed to stop wallowing in his basement and replaying games he’d basically memorized and be a fucking adult.

Even if he was barely seventeen.

There was some shitty dialogue streaming across the top of the screen. Beldam was yelling at Doopliss and Marilyn to do a better job—rather unnecessary, considering Michael was way off his game and definitely losing. He wondered yet again why he wasn’t being yelled at. If there was a Squip in his head, his own personal Beldam trying to make him useful to some higher-end goal of world domination, then it was being pretty lackadaisical in terms of getting him to actually obey.

“I still don’t get why you’re fighting the Shadow Sirens,” Jeremy said, squinting at the screen. “All I remember is X-nauts on the moon.”

“Evil Peach is the boss, dumbass.”

Jeremy sighed and started picking at his nails. “Yeah, the X-nauts turn her evil or whatever. Doesn’t explain why Rumplestiltskin and the witches are here.”

Thanking his lucky Crystal Stars for turn-based combat, Michael drummed his fingers against the controller. Mario was panting and the Yoshi lay passed out on the ground, but it was his turn. They couldn’t hurt him now. He was in control, with nothing more to do until he felt like it. He could do anything but run away, and he could do it all in his own time. It was his turn.

All he had to do was defeat the shadows and the dopplegangers.

“You never explained why _you’re_ here,” he said finally, scrolling through to swap allies. His fault for using the baby Yoshi against an endgame boss, he guessed.

“I wanted to hang out with my best friend?”

Michael snorted. Yeah, _right._ Jeremy had given up that title. Michael wanted to be friends again, but Jeremy had been fighting back. He’d been a dick. He’d refused to be reasonable about anything, and he’d refused to even think about Michael, shrinking at the mere mention of him.

“You can tell him to leave,” Inner Jeremy said again.

No. No, he couldn’t. Michael was the one who wanted to make this work, the one who wanted to be friends again. He was just a little pissed at this new Jeremy. Pissed at him for making this so much harder than it had to be.

But he wouldn’t object to having the old Jeremy back, and this was the closest he’d gotten in ages. Jeremy was sitting in his designated beanbag, trying to talk video games, and calling them friends again. Come to think of it, he wasn’t actually sure when he’d last heard Jeremy call him his best friend. Was it…? No, there had to have been at least one time since they were down here last—

Oh, god. The last time Jeremy sat in that beanbag was the day Rich told him about Squips. The day before it went to hell. The day he’d called him his favorite person. It was—

Michael absolutely did _not_ choke up at the memory.

“Didn’t have anything better to do, did you?” he asked around the lump in his throat.

Jeremy sighed. “What more do you want from me, man?”

“Make him leave,” Inner Jeremy repeated.

“I’m not sure,” Michael said, doing the quick-time event for Vivian’s Fiery Jinx.

Jeremy squinted at the pixel effects. Michael’s enemies were burning, but still not anywhere near taken care of. “That goomba in the audience is gonna throw a rock at you.”

“Kick him out,” said a _very_ insistent Inner Jeremy.

Michael jumped on the offending goomba. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. Responsibility weighed on his shoulders and rattled in his skull like the hammer Doopliss just hit Mario over the head with. They were just going to keep spinning in circles unless Michael opened up his barriers. “What do _you_ want?” he asked, hoping against hope that he wasn’t letting in a Trojan Horse.

“I—” Jeremy shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Michael sighed. “If that were true, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Look, I don’t really know how to phrase it.”

Oh, avoidance tactics. He’d seen those before, and Inner Jeremy was kind enough to make a garbled choking noise in his head as reminder. _“I’m so–R—!”_

“Bullshit.”

“I don’t know what I did wrong!” Jeremy snapped. He pleaded at Michael with clear, electric eyes. He wasn’t crying. Michael almost wished he would.

“You don’t either,” hummed Inner Jeremy. “You don’t even know why you’re mad.”

Uh… Yeah he did? Jeremy was an asshole. He—Well he hadn’t done anything especially damning in at least a few weeks, but he was still being a pain in the neck.

“Maybe you should go,” Michael said.

“I don’t—” Jeremy shook his head and slumped down in his beanbag, his new and improved posture keeping it from crackling at all. “Look, we need to talk.”

“No shit.” Marilyn finally collapsed into a pile of pixels, so at least Michael could beat his virtual enemies without taking any more massive damage.

“I’m sorry,” Jeremy said.

“For?”

“Hear him out,” said Inner Jeremy, and Michael resisted the urge to put on his headphones to drown out the two-faced voice. Hadn’t he been trying to stand up for himself? What the fuck, Inner Jer? Just a statement to how confusing shit had been lately, he guessed, if his conscience couldn’t even make up its damn mind.

But what good could it even do? If he let Jeremy back in, he’d lose the barriers he’d worked so hard to put up. No use in walls if the enemy’s on your side.

Jeremy swallowed. “Just—I’ve been a dick.”

“If you think you’re gonna get through to me by repeating shit I already told you—”

“Michael!” Jeremy cried, leaning towards him. “I’m trying to be the better person here!”

Acid bubbled in his stomach. “Oh, so now I’m a _bad_ person.”

“He didn’t say that,” said Inner Jeremy.

“I didn’t say that,” Jeremy echoed.

The last Shadow Siren dropped dead and Michael’s grip tightened around the quaking controller. Level up time, bitches. The victory music and confetti, even when digital, boosted Michael’s mood more than he’d care to admit.

At least he could win at something, even if that something wasn’t life.

Or reconnecting with Jeremy. “Maybe I just need some time to myself,” he said.

“Hasn’t he left you alone long enough?” asked Inner Jeremy. “Don’t you _want_ to fix it?”

Jeremy slumped over himself, glaring balefully at Michael’s spotlit stage. “I never meant to abandon you.”

Inner Jeremy seemed amused by that, and Michael got a sudden flashback to a stony-faced Jeremy in a tiled room with bad EDM music bouncing in the background.

_Pick a fucking side,_ Michael wanted to shout at his brain. Was he supposed to forgive him or not?

Whatever happened on Halloween, Jeremy hadn’t _planned_ on leaving him. He hadn’t planned on lots of things, though. He hadn’t planned on dating Brooke to work his way up. He hadn’t planned on getting rejected by Christine and he hadn’t planned the ruin of the school play. Fine. But clearly, plans meant nothing, considering Michael’s plan for the day had been to wallow in his own misery and button-mash his way through not-so-eldritch ‘E for Everyone’ shadow demons.

“Doesn’t mean you didn’t,” he said finally.

Jeremy bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”

“You said that already.”

“How else do you want me to say it?” And Michael wasn’t sure if the strain in his voice was tears or exasperation, but it made something twist in his chest. God, he had to get over himself. No, he didn’t _like_ to see Jeremy upset, but… He kinda deserved it, didn’t he?

“What if I don’t want you to say it at all?”

Jeremy’s gaze drilled into him. “You can’t lie to me, Michael,” he said. “We practically share a brain.”

The mere thought of it nearly made Michael burst out laughing. They really did, didn’t they? Damn it all, Michael was so horribly, eternally connected to him that he infiltrated every corner of his mind. Jeremy was so much a part of Michael that he was the one always pulling the strings, the one whispering between the brain synapses. Everything Michael did was because of Jeremy—because he wanted to see him happy, because he wanted to see him acting like his old self again, because he didn’t want to see him at all.

Michael swallowed. “And?”

“There’s no way I’m the only one who wants to fix this.”

That…

What?

“You want to fix it?” Michael tore his eyes away from the TV screen, letting Mario loiter in one of the Palace of Shadows’ many puzzle corridors, this one with massive, switch-activated  glowing cubes.

Switch activated—

A switch went off in Michael’s head. For the first time in a very long time, he let himself actually _look_ at Jeremy. Not at his new clothes or his new square shoulders, but at him.

His hair was growing out, swooping low over his brow and curling around his ears; it was fluffy and unkempt and peeking down towards his collar in the back. A few stray locks fell across the frame of his glasses—when had he gone back to his glasses? Maybe Michael was biased, considering his own visual impairment, but he’d always said that anyone would look better with glasses, and Jeremy was no exception. They delicately framed and magnified his eyes—ghostly, electric, captivating—and pressed just slightly against his too-long, fluttery eyelashes. Jeremy always complained that his eyes itched when the lashes got pushed around, and that they left marks on the lenses when he blinked, but Michael relished the proof that his friend had the facial proportions of a baby deer. Partially because the furry jokes were always funny; mostly, he’d read somewhere that Disney characters were specifically designed that way to make them look more innocent and trustworthy. And he knew neither of those were true of Jeremy, but he didn’t particularly care when he was mere inches away with his blush-dusted cheeks and big electric eyes and soft pouting lips.

Innocent and trustworthy. Looking six months younger than Michael expected, and he could almost pretend the last six months hadn’t happened at all.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Jeremy said, and Michael could pick out the soft stippling of freckles along his nose, like the few stars brave enough to peek out at sunset.

He shook his head. “Yeah, I guess. Just—” Michael shrugged and turned back to the game, throwing Bobbery to activate a platform. He didn’t bother to finish his statement. There were a lot of things he could say and a lot of things he’d already said. He was past the point of explanations doing anyone any good, especially when he still wasn’t sure what exactly he was explaining.

“You’re—” Jeremy squinted at Mario jumping across a gap. “What’s with the glowing block puzzle? I thought there was another dragon boss battle.”

“I already beat him.” Gloomtail gave him the key to activate the series of puzzles that he had to solve to fight the Shadow Sirens. That was just the way with this game. Every riddle led to more. It was like life, in a way. Every time he thought he’d figured out his shit, something else popped up. Every slur thrown their way led to a Squip and every Squip led to new scars even after it was deactivated and every scar led somehow to Jeremy sitting next to him, looking so soft behind the invisible barrier that had been constructed between them.

“Does he eat the audience like Hooktail did?” Jeremy asked and Michael wondered how they could still be discussing video game trivia when Jeremy was _here_ and six months of asshole computer metamorphosis were stretched thin between them. There was a fishing line tugging at his sternum, hooked in his heart. Could they really just _move on?_ That easy?

“No,” Michael said, “he’s just got some poison breath shit.”

“And you can’t use the cricket trick, can you?”

“I thought you said you forgot about this game.”

Jeremy chuckled. “I remember Hooktail from when we were like four. It took me like six tries to beat him.”

Jeremy’s laugh was like a punch to the face. “Her,” Michael said.

He shot him a quizzical look, one eyebrow raised in the way that had looked stupid and cocky since he took the Squip, but now seemed perfectly natural because he was _here._ “Her?”

“Gloomtail’s dialogue,” Michael said, fumbling with the joystick. “From earlier. He called her his little sister,” and at that moment he made a rash decision, pausing the game. “Do you want to play something?” Jeremy was _here,_ he wasn’t sure when he might be coming back, the door was _right there_ in front of him, and he realized he’d be an idiot to not at least try the handle.

Jeremy bit his lip. “You’re literally in the middle of a puzzle.”

“I saved like two minutes ago.”

He shrugged, inspecting the candy-colored stats thrown up on screen. “I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

Jeremy nodded, jaw tight. “I’m okay to just hang out.”

Michael prodded just a little. Maybe the handle was just a little stuck. Rusty. It had been a while, after all. “Hanging out usually means doing stuff,” he said.

“It didn’t used to,” Inner Jeremy whispered in his head, and it was like the doorknob had burned him.

Jesus Christ, he was more desperate than he realized. Jeremy showed up uninvited and gave one measly apology and he was ready to tear down his defenses just like that.

Maybe Jeremy was the one who needed more time. Hell, any sane person would. The silence sat thick between them. Jeremy was picking at his nails again.

“If you say so,” Michael conceded to the lack of reply, letting the door stay closed.

He returned to the game, tapping his way through corridor after corridor of platforming puzzles. Not the most difficult thing he’d done lately, all things considered. Not even the ghostly enemies could get him down more than the overwhelming presence of the ghost of his best friendship.

Jeremy was the one to break the silence. “Christine told me more about your survey,” he said. “About you wanting to learn about the Squips?”

“That was supposed to be confidential,” hissed Inner Jeremy.

Michael rolled the subject around in his head. “I mean, I know I sorta snapped when you brought it up, but there was a _reason_ I didn’t ask—”

“No, she—” Jeremy shook his head. “She said you were trying to do it to help me.”

“Yeah… So?”

He couldn’t read the edge in Jeremy’s gaze as he studied him. “She said you were trying to be a good friend,” he said.

And Michael’s stupid heart—the one that was constricting in his chest at the prospect of _more—_ sent the banter bubbling out of his mouth before he could think. “Dude, I’m your only friend.”

“Not anymore,” Inner Jeremy scolded as Michael’s blood went cold. No. No, he wasn’t Jeremy’s only friend. He hadn’t been since the Squip reared its ugly head. He didn’t even know if he counted as Jeremy’s friend _at all_ anymore. How could he have just—?

But Jeremy was laughing. He was laughing his ringing, floating laugh that had made Michael’s gut twist into knots every time he’d heard it lately. Now, his intestinal tangle loosened. _He_ could still make him laugh, and that victory made his insides warmer than the digital confetti ever could.

Jeremy leaned back in the beanbag, gaze turning towards the dusty, insulation-coated ceiling. “I guess just—I’ve been selfish.”

“You’re allowed to be selfish sometimes,” Michael mumbled along with Inner Jeremy’s whisper.

There was that _look_ again. Like a current running through Jeremy’s eyes, and Michael’s lungs itched to know what it _meant._ “Doesn’t mean it was fair to you,” he said.

“Guess not.”

“You haven’t been fair to him either,” Inner Jeremy teased.

Michael told him to shut up. He was _so close,_ and his dumbass inner critic wasn’t gonna ruin it now.

Jeremy rested a hand on his shoulder, and the contact shot up and down his arm like lightning. “Hey… Thanks.” He stood.

And the warmth, the electricity that Michael had just been getting used to was extinguished with ice water pouring down his spine. “I thought you wanted to hang out?”

Jeremy shook his head, holding up his phone. “My dad needs me home all of a sudden. Something about a setting a curfew making him feel like a better parent, and I completely spaced. I’m already late.” His hands went to his pockets with the phone.

“Do—” Michael shook himself. “Yeah, no. Okay.”

“I’ll come over again soon, I promise.”

“Okay.” He would deny the lump that rose in his throat as Jeremy peeked over his shoulder from the bottom of the stairs.

There was that charged look again. “See you.”

“Bye.”

“ _Wow,”_ said Inner Jeremy, as Michael kept staring at the empty stairwell. “You’re hopeless.”

...Hopeless? What was that—?

“He has a girlfriend.”

And Michael’s heart dropped into his stomach. He wasn’t— He couldn’t— He’d already— He just wanted Jeremy to be his _friend_ again. That was it!

But then he saw Jeremy in his mind’s eye, sitting right in front of him, eyes wide and sparking. He saw his cascade of silky hair and his constellations of freckles and his soft mouth, with the lips turned down just slightly.

Right there. It would’ve been so easy to—

He felt the jolt in his skin again where Jeremy had touched him, burning through his sweatshirt and into his blood, setting his heart aflutter like a glitchy pacemaker.

The electricity squirmed through him. He’d call the feeling butterflies if it didn’t— If it wasn’t—  

Jeremy’s laugh rang in Michael’s ears like wind chimes. Like warning bells.

Shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I, like Jeremy, thought that Gloomtail was after the Shadow Sirens, because it’s been a few years since I played the game, so I had to angrily rewrite that part of the conversation when I found out how it actually went.
> 
> I adore feedback, so please feel free to tell me what you think!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael sat stiff, scrunching his sandwich wrapper as Jeremy gathered his stuff and opened the cruiser door. “Jeremy?”
> 
> “Hm?” he turned to look at him, brow creased just slightly and cheeks pink from the winter air. Something swooped in Michael’s ribcage, bringing the vomitous feeling back.
> 
> “Do you love her?”

“Mikey!”

He stopped dead in the crowded hallway (bad etiquette, he knew) to take a deep breath. Christine. Christine, Jeremy’s girlfriend. Michael’s almost-friend. Maybe-friend. Really friendly acquaintance? Christine who was so  _ right _ for Jeremy. Whom Jeremy had worked so  _ hard  _ for. 

“You’re pathetic,” Inner Jeremy said. “And you’re blocking traffic.”

Michael ignored him, instead turning to see an excited theatre kid skipping in place somewhere around his shoulder-level. 

She seemed unable to contain her excitement any longer once his gaze met hers. Giggles bubbled out of her mouth and—god, she was like the Energizer Bunny—she was practically vibrating. “Have you talked to Jeremy lately?”

Oh, great. Loaded questions. It was too much for him to expect for Jeremy to have kept his mouth shut about his visit to Michael’s basement. And just because  _ Michael _ was an oblivious idiot who couldn’t get his own feelings in order didn’t mean Jeremy wouldn’t have noticed anything about the charged looks and tingly touches. Christine wanted him to spill. She wanted him to come clean so she could stake her claim on Jeremy. She wanted to  _ gloat, _ because god already knew how many million times she’d end up on top. 

Of course, she looked far too sunshiney for that to be realistic. 

“Yeah?” Michael said, shifting over to the wall after two different seniors pushed past him. “Define lately.”

“Well, you know. I saw you at the mall on Saturday.”

“And?”

She stuck out her bottom lip. Jesus, she was a pouty three-year-old. “I  _ told _ him to go talk to you. Did he not?”

Michael ran a hand through his hair. “I mean, not at the mall.”

“Seymour Krelborn!” Christine spun in place with the force of her shout. Was—was that supposed to be a curse? “That boy—”

“Christine,” Michael said, holding his hands out in a ‘calm down’ gesture, “it’s  _ fine. _ He texted me and stuff. He apologized. It’s cool.” 

Her pout deepened. “You two should really talk it out face-to-face, and I  _ swear _ if he keeps putting this off—” Christine paced in place, voice rising. They were starting to get startled looks from passing freshmen. She whirled back to Michael, wagging a finger. “I’m not an idiot,” she said, “I  _ know  _ those red dots aren’t fruit punch!”

“What are you _ talking _ about?”

She glared up at him, but her eyes were slightly unfocused, as if she was staring through him. Michael valiantly didn’t flinch at the resulting wave of ice along his skin.  _ She could still see him. She was just frustrated and not paying attention. She wasn’t—Optic nerve— _

Really, it was like she was glaring at a ghostly image of Jeremy over his shoulder. She wasn’t looking at Michael because she wasn’t mad at Michael. He had to keep reminding himself. She was pissed at Jeremy for being a bad friend. Michael had nothing to do with it.  __

Except, well, that he was the one Jeremy was being a bad friend to. 

At least, that was what Christine believed. Michael didn’t want to get into his thoughts on the matter. He knew there were bad things happening, but he’d already dwelled too long on who was to blame.

“Sorry,” Christine said, blinking awareness back into her gaze. “I’ve been listening to Little Shop of Horrors lately, and there’s all this stuff in act two about Seymour—that’s the main character—trying to hide the evidence of how he murdered Audrey’s—his love interest’s—abusive boyfriend and fed him to the alien plant and just—” Christine flailed her hands about before smoothing at her skirt. “Anyway, the way Jeremy’s been avoiding all this and avoiding  _ you _ when you guys really need to work it out, it feels—” She took a deep breath, “I just hope he won’t—” shook her head, “hope he hasn’t  _ already _ done something he’ll regret. That’s all,” and Michael’s mind flashed acidic, Mountain Dew green. 

Did—did Jeremy regret it? Did he regret letting that green monster into his head? No alien plant, sure. No one was actually dead, but—

“Who knew success would come with messy, nasty strings?” Inner Jeremy said—nearly sang—between his ears. Jeremy had found his success. He’d gotten the girl and the fame and the fortune. Michael was just one of the strings left behind. 

Michael, who’d been trying so hard to follow the rope through the labyrinth, to see if he could keep up, holding onto the last embroidery thread of a friendship bracelet that had begun to unravel longer ago than he’d probably even noticed. Michael, who had strings of his own. 

Like the stupid fucking heartstrings that had decided to twang when Jeremy looked at him with eyes that danced with a neon buzz. 

He wasn’t sure why he was avoiding telling Christine about the basement, because  _ yes,  _ he’d talked it out with Jeremy. In person. Yes, things were mostly maybe okay now. Yes, they’d taken a few steps towards at least being able to talk civilly. 

But it also felt private. Not because anything had happened—it hadn’t! And  _ not _ because he wished anything had. They had gotten through the small talk. They could try to hang out again. Maybe get back to the place where they could do it without the spider web strings threatening to snare them at the first wrong move. 

Michael had wanted to go back to how things were. If that meant he had to relapse—

“Look,” he said, acutely aware of the two-minute warning bell for class starting, “as far as I know, he’s not hiding anything. We’ve been talking. He texted me and we were gonna try to meet up at lunch or something. Don’t worry about me.”

“Are you sure? You guys are being honest with each other?”

Something spicy climbed up his throat, burning with all the things he could tell her. Was Jeremy being honest with him? He had no fucking idea. Maybe not, and maybe he’d never been, considering Michael hadn’t realized how far he’d go to get out of his social gutter until it was too late.

Was Michael being honest with Jeremy? That was an even bigger negative. He—Well, he hadn’t told him about his panic attack on Halloween. He hadn’t told him about getting high and burning their old memorabilia and getting caught by his dad. He hadn’t told him about the crippling terror coursing through his veins as he watched him and everyone else collapse at the Play or about the way the ambulance sirens almost sent him into another spiral. He hadn’t told him about fighting through walls of doctors to see him in the hospital.

Hadn’t told him about Jenna’s offer. Hadn’t told him that he  _ took it, _ hadn’t told him about how it hadn’t even fucking worked or about how he’d had a breakdown in the middle of the mall. 

And he  _ certainly  _ hadn’t told him about the electricity in the basement or the way it made his heart flutter and his stomach squirm. 

So  _ yeah, _ they were totally being honest.

“Yeah, no. I’m fine,” Michael said, quirking his best half-smile towards Christine. “I’m pretty sure we’d both be able to tell if he’d murdered someone,” he attempted to joke. “I gotta get to class, but—”

Christine blinked, startled. “Oh! Yeah, absolutely! Sorry to keep you!” And with that, she dashed off.  

Sitting in the back of his early-morning math class, Michael snuck his way onto his phone. Jeremy  _ had _ texted him. He’d left Michael in his basement to freak out over his feelings in peace, and then he’d texted. He really  _ was _ trying.

“Hey,” he’d said, “Do you want to grab lunch tomorrow? At that one sandwich place you like?”

“Sure, meet you at the Cruiser at noon,” Michael replied, not commenting on the fact that Jeremy hadn’t even  _ tried  _ to remember the name of the restaurant. No, he never really knew it in the first place, considering Michael always called it ‘Subway’s Edgy Older Brother,’ and they were usually in and out too fast to try and decipher the graffiti-print sign, but he used to play along.

“Yeah, didn’t I call it ‘Salami Death Metal’ once?” Inner Jeremy asked. 

Whatever. It didn’t matter. Didn’t matter if Jeremy remembered the name of one little sandwich shop or wanted to bother reviving their old inside jokes. 

It was fine. They cycled through different comedic styles so much anyway. Even if they  _ were _ still buddy-buddy, Jeremy was totally allowed to get tired of a shtick. Everything was fine because now it was tomorrow and Michael was gonna to go out for lunch with his old pal Jeremy. They were gonna work things out.

God, ‘going out to lunch’ made it sound like a date—which it definitely wasn’t! No, Michael was  _ not _ going out with Jeremy. He was getting lunch with his friend. That was all it was and absolutely all he wanted it to be. 

Sure, there was a time when he would’ve hoped and prayed for more. Those months—or was it years?—when Jeremy’s every move caught his attention, made his blood run with a shiver. When a fleeting glance from his best friend would send Michael’s every thought reeling with  _ what it could mean. _ When every mention of Christine Canigula made his heart sink because he knew he had no chance, but when he plastered on a smile anyway because Jeremy needed it. Because he loved Jeremy, and that meant putting his happiness first. If Jeremy didn’t want Michael—which he clearly didn’t—then Michael wouldn’t press the issue. Wouldn’t even mention it. Jeremy didn’t like him like that, and it stung, choked his lungs like a layer of flower petals, but it was fine. If Jeremy was happier as friends, Michael would take what he could get.

And fucking—he thought he’d made  _ progress. _ It cut into his heart deep enough to scar, but Michael had  _ improved _ while Jeremy was cavorting with evil computers. For the first time ever, Michael was able to see that Jeremy’s happiness could hurt him, and so he wrapped up his bruised heart and took it out of Jeremy’s hands. He  _ wasn’t  _ in love. He was a hopeless teenage boy who’d gotten his feelings hurt. He could heal. He could get over it. He could be happy having Jeremy as a friend and nothing more, not because that was what made Jeremy happy, but because it was what made  _ Michael _ happy. 

He was allowed to be selfish sometimes. 

And he was done pining over a piece of shit who was willing to shove him to the side at the first sign of success. 

Or so he’d thought. 

Months alone in his basement had let Michael get over his stupid crush, but then Jeremy appeared, without even the decency to knock, and found a way under his skin again. Without even doing anything. 

But no. It was fine. Michael was just relapsing. He could ignore the thorns squeezing around his lungs for the sake of being friends again, and once they were, he could re-adjust to the proximity. He could talk some sense back into his stupid feelings and pull them back onto the rails. Jeremy was  _ wrong  _ for him. 

Really, that was it. He’d spent so many years thinking he must’ve been wrong for Jeremy. That Jeremy would never like him back because of something in Michael. Something as big as having been friends for too long or something as small as him not knowing all about some mutated venus fly trap in a musical. But no. It wasn’t that Christine was better for Jeremy than Michael was. It was that someone had to be better for  _ Michael _ than  _ Jeremy _ was. He wasn’t wrong for Jeremy, Jeremy was wrong for him.

He just had to make sure the aching in his chest listened to logic when the ex-crush in question peered at him over the roof of his PT Cruiser at lunch. 

“Sandwiches?” Jeremy asked and Michael swallowed the lump in his throat.

“Yeah, hop in.”

The seat belts clicked like gunshots in Michael’s nervous ears. His hands went white-knuckled on the steering wheel and trembled around the key in the ignition.  _ No. Deep breaths. It’s just Jeremy. Just like always. You’re fine. _

“Pathetic,” said Inner Jeremy, and Michael was inclined to agree. 

It’s just Jeremy. He shouldn’t be nervous. It’s just Jeremy, with his fidgeting hands and striped shirt and unruly hair. It’s just Jeremy, looking sideways at him with doe-like eyes through glasses that are glinting just slightly in the noontime sun.

“What’s with the glasses?” Michael asked, pushing his anxiety into the gas pedal as he pulled out onto the main road.

Jeremy furrowed his brow. “I need to see?”

“No, just,” Michael shook his head and changed lanes. “I dunno, you didn’t wear them for a while. I thought you got contacts or something.”

He bit his lip and fiddled with his fingernails. “I didn’t get contacts.”

“So what? You walked around blind?” The ‘because’ tingled on Michael’s tongue.  _ Because you thought it’d make you cooler? Because it told you it would?  _ But the awkward air across the cupholder kept the thought firmly inside his mouth.

Jeremy mentioned it for him, though. “No, uh…” He cleared his throat. “The Squip. It. Um—Messed with my optic nerve. Did a lot of shit to my eyesight, including uh…”

Including shutting Michael out. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew that, as far as the Squip was concerned, fucking with Jeremy’s vision—with how and  _ what  _ he saw—was—

“Fixing it?”

He shrugged. “I mean, it’s wearing off. I was in denial for like a week before I realized I really couldn’t read any of the slides on Jake’s English powerpoint.”

“Right. Well.” Michael thrust the car into park in front of the sandwich shop, which was only a few blocks from the school, and if it weren’t the dead of winter, they probably would’ve walked. “Let’s hope the glasses work well enough for you to read the menu.”

Michael wasn’t one to get takeout. He usually held the opinion that part of the point of restaurant dining was the  _ dining. _ Still, lunch was only so long and Jeremy was still recovering from his hospital leave. He couldn’t afford to be late, so the Cruiser in the school parking lot would have to suffice for their cafe table. They ate in silence and Michael prayed to no one that shoving food in his mouth would help his squirming stomach instead of getting immediately forced back up. 

Jeremy made it through half a sandwich before he got weirdly still, picking at the bread crust. “I’m sorry about earlier,” he said. 

Michael swallowed. “Why?”

“Just—The mall, and… and everything. I’m—” He let out a rueful laugh. “I’m still no good at confrontation, I guess.”  

_ Who is?  _ Michael thought, Inner Jeremy smirking in his head as if to say “Certainly not you.” Their inability to confront their dumbass issues was the whole reason Michael’s digestive system was already rejecting his lunch. They didn’t confront things at the beginning of the year, the Squip kept them from solving anything, and then, instead of talking it out like reasonable human beings, they’d spent several weeks being shitty and passive aggressive and taking  _ more _ defective computer pills. Even now, actively trying to talk it out, it was  _ hard fucking work. _ And Michael was still inclined to throw up. 

He also needed to confront what happened in the basement. Part of him wondered if Jeremy did too. A greedy part  _ wished _ he did. 

“Yeah, well,” he said, “I guess I should thank your girlfriend for giving you a shove, then,” because Christine was responsible for reminding them that they  _ could _ work this out.  

Jeremy chuckled again, before his face fell and he turned his attention to sandwich-paper origami. Uh oh. 

“What’s up?”

The corner of his mouth quirked up in a half-smile. “Sometimes I remember she’s way too good for me.”

“She’s not—”

Jeremy shook his head. “After all the shit I pulled, I guess—” The paper crinkled as he smoothed it back out against his leg. “I just never expected to actually be where we are now.”

Michael was reminded of a lunch a lifetime ago, when Jeremy stood before him, sheepishly admitting to shredding his attempted love letter. Inner Jeremy scoffed at the memory. “Be honest. You didn’t expect it either.”

“Well, I’m happy for you, man,” Michael said. 

“Are you?” Inner Jeremy asked.

_ Shut up.  _

“Thanks,” said Jeremy. “I mean, it’s kinda weird sometimes. She’s like—she doesn’t take shit from anyone, y’know? And it’s refreshing, because, well—just look at me—but sometimes it’s just… A little much?”

Inner Jeremy raised an eyebrow in Michael’s mind’s eye. “Wasn’t that why he liked her in the first place?”

Michael wrapped up the rest of his sandwich. So much for a return to normalcy, though he’d admit that helping Jeremy with Christine was no new occurrence. “You just need to get used to it, dude. You’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah, just—” Jeremy’s fiddling had drifted to the car itself, fingernails scraping along the splitting seams in the leather. “She’s awesome and stuff, but she’s not—” he took a deep breath. “Not what I expected, exactly.”

“Why not?” Michael had never even paid  _ that _ much attention to Christine, but for as extreme as he found her, he was never exactly  _ surprised  _ by her nonsense. 

“I spent so long wanting to be with her that I guess I didn’t think about it. She’s a ton of fun to be around, just—”

“Just what?” 

Jeremy gnawed at his tongue, as if questioning his words as he spoke them. “She’s so hyper,” he said. “And she’s like—always happy? And like, obviously, she makes  _ me _ happy, but I still feel shitty about some stuff—” he waved a hand between them, still staring at his lap, “like this—and—” Jeremy sighed and took off his glasses to run a hand across his face. He stared out the windshield with cloudy eyes, so different than the clear, voltaic ones he’d looked at Michael with only a day ago. “I don’t feel like I can be honest with her about it. I don’t wanna drag her down.”

A stone settled in Michael’s stomach. “Shit.”

Jeremy sighed. “Yeah. I just feel...  _ different _ around her. And I used to think it was good and was just because I liked her that much, but now?” He rubbed at his eyes again and put his glasses back on. “Fuck man, I’m tired.”

Michael’s muscles went heavy and hot. His throat was dry and tacky and his fingers itched to reach for the fountain drink in the cup holder. Gravity compressed in on the tiny car, trapping him with Jeremy. And Jeremy’s confession. “He’s not happy with her,” Inner Jeremy said.

That—couldn’t be right. He came all this way. After everything that—No. He  _ looked _ happy. When he was with her, he— 

_ “You _ usually look happy,” Inner Jeremy pointed out. “But  _ are _ you?”

Michael pushed the thoughts aside, swallowed down the frog in his throat, and pretended his hoodie collar wasn’t choking him. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t know.” Jeremy frowned. “You always used to listen to me ramble on about her, and, I mean, I felt like I had to tell  _ someone.” _

“I—I don’t think I can really help. It’s not like I know her that well—”

“But you know  _ him,”  _ said Inner Jeremy. 

“And just—” Michael shook his head. “I don’t know. I want you to be happy, man, but…” 

He trailed off as Inner Jeremy spoke again, “Does he deserve to be?”

_ Yes.  _ Yes, Jeremy deserved to be happy. He deserved to be the happiest of anyone. Michael could be a petty asshole, but he couldn’t deny that he  _ wanted _ to see Jeremy happy. He’d always put Jeremy first. Jeremy’s happiness before his own.

“You’d think you’d have learned your lesson by now,” Inner Jeremy said with an imaginary roll of his eyes. 

Michael wanted Jeremy to be happy. He wanted to do whatever he could to  _ make  _ him happy, and he thought Christine was the answer.

“Yeah, no,” Jeremy said. “I get it. This is what I wanted. He sighed and unbuckled his seatbelt, wrapping up the rest of his sandwich. “Thanks for—” he gestured at the food and the car and smiled at Michael, which should  _ not  _ have made his chest clench. “You know. I should make sure I get to gym on time.”

“Oh, damn, dude.  _ Gym? _ I’m so sorry.”

He laughed. “See you later.”

Michael sat stiff, scrunching his sandwich wrapper as Jeremy gathered his stuff and opened the cruiser door. “Jeremy?”

“Hm?” he turned to look at him, brow creased just slightly and cheeks pink from the winter air. Something swooped in Michael’s ribcage, bringing the vomitous feeling back.

“Do you love her?” Inner Jeremy said, voicing the question itching in Michael’s skull. Do you love her? Are you happy? Was any of this worth it?

And if not… What was Michael supposed to do about it? His skin was still crawling, hot and raw like a sunburn. Jeremy’s eyes weren’t electric today. They were like winter mist, clouded with questions neither of them could answer because  neither of them knew what the fuck they were doing. It hung in the air between them like frost. 

Michael thought of Christine. Who was _always_ electric. Maybe that wasn’t what Jeremy thought he wanted anymore. Maybe he wasn’t happy like he thought he’d be, but...

He sat there, digesting deli meat and deliberations, and it settled solid in his stomach. 

Christine wasn’t better for Jeremy than Michael was. Not anymore, apparently. But that didn’t mean Jeremy was right for Michael. He never had been.

And Michael was determined to tap down on the butterflies until they agreed with him. 

So, mind and belly full, Michael smiled, thought of Christine and the little bit of everything he knew about her, and said, “Break a leg, man.”

Jeremy smiled and closed the car door with a thud, and Michael wondered if either of them even knew  _ how  _ to be happy anymore.    
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The thing with this fic is that Idk if I'm projecting or not? I don't feel like I am when I'm writing (most of it), but then I'll reread it and be like... huh.   
> Anyway.  
> Felt kinda dumb having Christine summarize Little Shop when every other reference in this thing has been super light on explanation, but she had to for Michael’s sake. I know I’ve had him be familiar with it in other fics, but not this one. I also had to invent a restaurant because I’ve never been to New Jersey and I have no clue what would be readily available. Sue me.  
> I adore feedback, so please feel free to tell me what you think!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You gave him up.”  
> He closed his eyes. “For nothing.”  
> Michael gave up his best friend. Because he loved him, because he thought it was what was best for him—for both of them—and there was no way to go back.  
> God, he was such a loser.

Brooke glanced up at him over the top of her romance paperback, taking a sip of bookstore latte. Michael hadn’t been in the bookshop in a good decade, not since he started needing to read for school and therefore lost all desire to do it on his own time, but he’d be damned if he tried to talk to Brooke one-on-one without some form of distraction—like the “bestselling” horror novel he’d swiped from the nearest shelf simply because it was the first book he saw without either a shirtless man or self-help label on the cover. Deja vu bounced around in his brain as he stared at his now-cold coffee. Except this time, he didn’t know what he wanted. 

The last time he’d talked to Brooke, he had a questionnaire. He had a purpose: help Jeremy. 

Hell, he’d had a clipboard. 

Now, staring into the lukewarm bean-water as if it were a magical elixir to solve his problems, he didn’t. No interview, no pen, no possibility of a pill in his pocket that could change things around, even for the worse. Christ, even the coffee cure wouldn’t do shit except fuel his caffeine addiction. 

Brooke huffed, marking her place in the book with a fluttering receipt. “Okay, spill the beans.”

Michael continued to stare down into his mug, scraping his thumb over the pages of Stephen King’s whatever-the-fuck. 

“You’ve been acting weird,” she said. She didn’t say how she knew. Didn’t point out the fact that Michael had been avoiding everyone and everything since Jeremy closed the car door on him, especially Jeremy. 

“I’m—worried,” he admitted. 

Brooke tilted her head. “About what?” 

“Jeremy,” Inner Jeremy said. “You’re worried about Jeremy.”

“I just—everything, I guess.” Michael took a gulp of coffee, washing down the urge to cry. 

Brooke swirled her drink. “Yeah, I get that.” She trailed a perfectly-manicured nail along the mug handle. “This girl in my gov class had a mental breakdown yesterday about studying for finals for four different AP classes,” she said, “but somehow I don’t think that’s what you meant.”

Michael sighed and hunched further into the table. “How’d you know?”

Her mouth quirked up in a half-smile. “It’s Jeremy, isn’t it?”

Inner Jeremy gloated as Michael choked on his coffee.  _ “What?” _

“Let’s face it,” Brooke said with a shrug. “We both know that you and I don’t have a ton in common, or very many reasons to talk…” She trailed off expectantly.

“Except Jeremy. Yeah.” 

“So what’s wrong? Christine said that he wasn’t at lunch the other day because he was with you.”

Michael cleared his throat, willing the words to string themselves together in a way that was even moderately coherent. “You dated him, right?”

Brooke blinked. “Yeah, but what does that—?”

“What was it like? I mean—Like.” He swallowed hard around the final swig of coffee. “Did he seem happy?”

She ran her nails along the cover of her book. It  _ was _ one with a shirtless man on the cover, holding a woman in a flowing dress behind a gaudy cursive title. Something crossed between her eyes and she pressed her lips together. “Compared to when?”

“I don’t—”

“To be honest?” Brooke said, flipping the novel over and picking at a barcode sticker, “And it’s hard for me to say this, but—” She ripped the sticker and sighed as it left half of the adhesive behind. “I’m not sure I’ve  _ ever _ seen him happy.”

Michael’s chest suddenly felt like someone had dropped a rock into his heart. “Oh.”

“I mean, I haven’t really known him all that long—”

“Yeah, no, I—”

“Knew that already,” Inner Jeremy said. “You knew he wasn’t happy.”

That.

“Look, I  _ wanted _ him to be happy with me, I  _ did, _ But.” Brooke turned her book over in her hands, riffling through the pages. “And I’m not saying this to make myself look better or anything, but like. He was always so stiff, and honestly he was pretty selfish and—” She huffed and pressed her hands into the table, finally meeting Michael’s eyes. “It felt like he didn’t really like me back, okay? And so it pissed me off when Chloe tried to sleep with him, but I can’t say I was surprised.”

Michael watched her over his glasses as she slumped back in her seat, playing with her hair. “Yeah,” he said, throat sticky. He wished he had more coffee.

Brooke sighed. “As far as I can tell, he’s doing better now, alright? Don’t worry about him.”

“I mean. He’s my best friend,” Michael said.

“Yeah, and Chloe’s mine,” she said, crossing her arms. “That doesn’t mean we don’t need some space from each other sometimes.”

Every bone in Michael’s body ached. His mouth tasted swollen and his fingers itched. He started dog-earring pages of the horror novel at random. “Has Christine said anything about—?”

“She’s worried about him,” Brooke said, then leaned across the table to smooth his hands out of their frantic fidgeting. Michael jumped at the contact, eyes darting up to meet hers. They were soft, the lids shimmering. “She’s worried about you, too.”

“She’s worried you’re gonna make things worse,” Inner Jeremy said. 

_ No she’s not, _ Michael reasoned. He wasn’t doing anything. He  _ wasn’t _ going to take Jeremy from her. She was just worried because he’d been a pile of shit lately and she wasn’t an idiot. He wasn’t exactly doing a great job at hiding it.

“Yeah,” Michael said, averting his gaze and pulling his hands into his lap.

“Have you talked to him?”

_ “Yes!”  _ Michael all but shouted, hands jumping back up to slam against the table. “And it just—” His voice caught in his throat. Yes, he’d talked to Jeremy.  _ That was half the problem.  _ “I don’t want to talk about it.”  

Brooke’s gaze fell over him like a blanket, surprisingly warm. “You love him,” she said.

Well.

Michael froze in his attempts to burrow into his hoodie. His veins thrummed with ice water, and still-cold coffee churned in the pit of his stomach. “W-what?” he croaked.

“It’s obvious, I mean.” Brooke shrugged. “You’ve been friends forever. It makes sense.”

Oh. The frigid panic settled, draining down his ribcage like cooling metal, scalding and stiffening. “Yeah.” He shoved his glasses further up his nose and swallowed tearful bile. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You’re pathetic,” said Inner Jeremy.

Brooke picked at the remains of the barcode on her book, eyes scanning over the summary on the back. “Do you know why I read romance stories?” she asked.

Michael gripped at his empty coffee cup, imagining he could shatter the porcelain in his fists. “No.”

“I’ve always heard,” Brooke explained, “that real love is wanting someone else to be happy. No matter what. And, well,” she flipped the book over again, tracing the title under delicate fingers and eyes. “It’s nice to see it work out, because it’s just so hard to find anything like that in real life.”

He felt sick. “Yeah.”

“No matter what,” Inner Jeremy repeated. 

Jeremy wasn’t happy, and it ate away in the pit of Michael’s stomach. After everything they’d been through, they still hadn’t reached the threshold of whatever the impossible cost might be.  _ No matter what. _

The reason Jeremy wasn’t happy had nothing to do with Michael. It was because… Because he was trying so hard to encourage his girlfriend. To not drag her out of her bubbly stratosphere. 

“Do you love her?” Inner Jeremy echoed from the other day, and Michael knew the answer without asking. The same way he knew—

He couldn’t let him keep loving her like  _ that.  _

Because Jeremy wasn’t happy, and Michael loved him too much to let that be the case.

“My ride’s here,” Brooke said, breaking the silence with a glance at her phone. “But you know, watching how you’ve stuck with Jeremy through all of his bullshit…” She trailed off as she stood, smiling at Michael in the dim cafe lighting, backlit by bookshelves overstuffed with self-help advice and careful theming. The kind that made his heart spin and his head hurt. “You’ve got more love in you than most of us could dream of, Michael.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Thanks.”

The bell over the bookstore entrance jingled behind her as Michael stared into the coffee-stained ring at the bottom of his cup, feeling for all intents and purposes like his date had stood him up.

Ha.

“You want him to be happy,” Inner Jeremy said. 

Yeah. He loved Jeremy. Great. Old news. 

“No matter what.”

The cafe radio switched from smooth jazz to ‘80s pop. Whitney Huston’s voice drifted through the coffee-crackled air, and Michael let his head drop to the table, the back of his neck dripping with cold sweat as flames licked up his esophagus. 

_ No matter what. _

He’d thought they’d gotten there already. The ‘what’ was supposed to be over. Michael had let Jeremy tear him apart to earn his happiness. That was supposed to be the end of it. Jeremy was happy. Without him. And Michael would learn to be the same, starting with a joint and the ashen remains of trading cards and Weird Al tickets. 

And then Michael fucked it all up. He saved the day, like some goddamn comic book hero, because he  _ was  _ that desperate, and because, honestly, Mr. Heere was right. Jeremy was a little shit. And Michael loved him. And he wasn’t gonna let him destroy himself. 

After _ that, _ they were supposed to be happy. Finally. They were supposed to move on, and then Michael’s stupid fucking crush came back and Jeremy wasn’t happy with the girl of his dreams and—

At every turn, Michael was carving out pieces of himself for Jeremy. Like some twisted game of Operation, where the little plastic wishbone was sacrificed into his best friend’s waiting hand, all while Michael’s metal walls were pressed upon by swords and buzzing red with the strain. And yet he couldn’t stop playing. 

It wasn’t working. Jeremy wasn’t happy, and the truth of that curled in Michael’s stomach like a spiteful snake, venom leaking into every word that passed between them. 

He wished he didn’t love him. He’d wished it since eighth grade, the first time Jeremy’s laugh made his heart flutter and he couldn’t meet his eyes. He loved Jeremy so much it hurt. In more ways than one.

There was a clump of steel in his lungs as Michael whispered to himself, “It wasn’t even worth it.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“Nothing’s changed.”

“He’s not a loser anymore,” Inner Jeremy said with a shrug. 

Michael groaned and ran a hand through his hair. “Everything that happened and—”

“You gave him up.”

He closed his eyes. “For nothing.” 

Michael gave up his best friend. Because he loved him, because he thought it was what was best for him—for both of them—and there was no way to go back. 

God, he was such a  _ loser. _

He stared after Brooke again, almost expecting to see the glint of gold-leaf sunshine on her hair between the bookshelves. What happened in the last few weeks? The last time he talked to her, she was blabbering bubblegum nonsense about Strawberry Shortcake and drugs she’d never done. Michael’s fingers drifted to the cord of the headphones around his neck. His shield against the world. His shield against everything but Jeremy for… god, how long?

Brooke cared to take time to talk to him. Christine was worried about him. Hell, Rich had made room for him at the lunch table. Such a kindergarten gesture, sure, but more than he’d ever expected from anyone, much less  _ Rich. _

He sighed. Jeremy had been his whole life for so long, and he was only just realizing what he’d missed out on. 

“Look,” Michael rehearsed into the icy air, “I  _ really _ want things to just go back to normal. Or, you know, as normal as they can be when you have new friends—and that’s fine!” The winter afternoon glared like an LED. Frozen light danced on dead branches. A stream trickled in the gutter and blackened slush piled between parking spaces. " I’m sorry I’m shit at talking, and I’m sorry I’m shit at confronting my feelings. I promise I’ll tell you everything once I’ve figured it out, but can we just go back to how things were for now?” He paced back and forth on the frost-laced lawn outside of the school. Last period was almost over, and he didn’t usually bother to stay at school when he ditched, but  _ seriously. _

They had to talk.

Occasionally, one of the icicles hanging from the nearby tree would drip onto his head. 

“I know things are weird between us, and I know they will be for a while, and that’s  _ fine,  _ but what I really want is—Jeremy!” He turned in his pacing and nearly smacked into him, only just taking into account the packed parking lot and horde of milling students. Of course he’d be too caught up in his head to fucking notice that the bell had rung.  

“Sorry!” Jeremy squeaked. “I didn’t think I’d find you here.”

Michael blinked. “Where else would I be?”

“I don’t know,” Jeremy said with a frown. “This is just the first time we’ve met here in a while.”

Michael opened his mouth to ask what he meant when the icicle flung another drop at him and forcefully jogged his memory. He blinked, cold water dribbling through his hair. “The rendezvous point,” he said. “Right.”

Sometime in the dawn of their freshman year, dwarfed by backpacks twice their size and upperclassmen twice that, proto-Jeremy and Michael had concocted their brilliant plan to hang under a tree that was conveniently away from the prying eyes of society as they waited for Jeremy’s dad to drive them home. 

Michael swallowed. Okay. “We need to talk.”

Jeremy nodded, stuffing his hands in his pockets and staring at the dead grass under his feet. 

“Look,” Michael started. “I—I just wanted to say—”

“I’m sorry,” Jeremy blurted. 

He blinked. “Yeah. That.”

“No,” Jeremy said, shuffling his feet.  _ “I’m  _ sorry. I’ve been selfish and I never paid attention to you, and you deserve so much better than that. I’ve been a shitty friend.”

Huh. “Well, I mean. Ditto dude.” Michael rubbed at the back of his neck. 

“No, I mean it. You deserve so much better than me.”

“Jeremy—”

“Let me finish.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About wanting me to be happy? And just—I think I finally figured out what I want.”

Inner Jeremy scoffed. “This sounds familiar.”

Michael’s throat was dry. “Okay? What?”

Jeremy finally looked at him, sparks dancing in his eyes like glittering frost. He chewed on his lip. “You remember that one time when we were playing Pokémon and those two seniors wouldn’t stop sucking face?”

“Uh… Yeah?” It was no mystery that their ‘super secret bro hangout’ was also prime makeout territory—isolated from eighty percent of prying eyes and all that. But—What? What did that have to do with anything? Had Jeremy  _ not _ snogged his girlfriend in every secluded corner yet? 

Holy shit, when did he get so close?

Jeremy was holding his breath, eyes darting around Michael’s face, and Michael stood like a block of ice until Jeremy swallowed and closed the distance. 

It was exactly like Michael had imagined and more. He tasted like toothpaste and the metallic tang of bitten-raw skin. His lips were chapped but soft, and his hands wound in the fabric of Michael’s hoodie. Michael grasped at nothing, muscles seizing and heart thundering in his ears. A jolt shot up his spine when Jeremy licked into his mouth. 

The icicle dripped into them again, sending a fresh-melted tear splashing between their faces.

Michael yanked himself back, stumbling backwards from a glossy-eyed and pink-lipped Jeremy, looking absolutely  _ wrecked.  _ Holy fuck. His hair was fluffed just slightly in the front, and he licked his lips, sending Michael’s blood into a whirlpool. A thunderstorm raged in his chest, begging him to reel back in. The air between them popped with some invisible current. Michael’s ears rang with static. 

Cold water dripped down his nose, splattered on his glasses. He took a shuddering breath. Okay. 

“Did you just brush your teeth?”

Jeremy laughed, wavering with disbelief. His cheeks were dusted pink, the tip of his nose cherry-red. He shook his head. “Some of the student council people were giving out candy canes.” His eyes shone, as if lit from inside. The way they crinkled around the corners as he smiled made Michael’s lungs feel folded up. 

He swallowed, lightheaded. “Right.” 

Another shock zapped across his neck and he nearly flew out of his skin, senses returning full-force. “Wait— _ no.  _ This _ isn’t happening.” _

“What?”

God—“You have a  _ girlfriend!” _

Jeremy blushed and coughed. “Yeah—about that.”

Holy shit. “Don’t tell me you broke up.”

He shook his head. “She doesn’t know.”

Jesus Christ. Michael ran a hand over his face, wiping away at the lingering water from his nose. “Know  _ what?” _

“I just,” Jeremy sighed and leaned against the tree, “I thought I loved her, but I think I just put her on this huge pedestal." His eyes were nearly cyan against the gray winter world. "I was so focused on her that I never really thought about this—”

Shit. 

“—About you.”

“This is new,” Inner Jeremy said, almost with a laugh. 

This wasn’t happening. Jeremy’s eyes bored into him, and Michael felt like he’d stuck a fork in an outlet. His hands shook. He couldn’t catch his breath. His vision was still spotted where snowmelt had dried on his glasses. He couldn’t feel his heartbeat anymore, but he could hear the blood roaring in his ears. 

“I spent so much time trying to be cool that I forgot who I was. What made me happy. You make me happy, Michael.”

_ “No matter what,” _ said Inner Jeremy. 

“I—I have to go.” 

It took every ounce of self control to not look back for Jeremy’s response, and every ounce of focus not to trip and wipeout. Every cell in his body was chanting  _ Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy.  _ His nerve endings stood on end. 

Battery acid bubbled under his skin as everything he'd agonized and rationalized over for the last, oh, _four years,_ came crumbling down around him. All of his walls, all of his locks, everything he thought he knew about his best friend, which had already been rewritten one too many times. 

Jeremy wasn’t supposed to love him  _ back. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Happy sadistic writer dance*  
> I love Brooke as a character. I know I'm not the most consistent with her, but I always enjoy writing for her anyway.  
> Poor Michael thought he was figuring everything out lol.  
> I want to finish this before September, but I'm honestly not so sure I expect to. Don't hold me to anything. 
> 
> I adore feedback, so please feel free to tell me what you think!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For twelve years, if you asked Michael how Jeremy would react to literally anything, he’d have been able to tell you. 
> 
> And if you’d asked him how he’d react to a sudden crush on his best friend—Well, firstly Michael would’ve laughed in your face, because Jeremy didn’t have a crush on him, and he never would. But secondly, he’d know that Jeremy, a walking tower of nerves and self-deprecation, wouldn’t do anything about it.

Unfamiliar facades flashed by, dead lawns and icy driveways blurring together. The census of house numbers and street names ticked on in his head, a nonsensical computer code shuffled together like a game of poker he was destined to lose. Michael’s lungs burned and his legs ached. Voltage jumped along his skin, scrambling tumbleweeds in his throat. 

He’d been too much of an idiot to get in his car and drive away, so now he was shivering, not quite running, left to wander the neighborhoods and hope to god he wasn’t followed. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t want Jeremy to follow him, necessarily, but he needed to clear his head, and that was impossible when the kid was carving away everything Michael had ever thought he’d known. 

Cold sweat collected around his collar, and Michael let himself stumble to a stop, pulse roaring like a hurricane in his ears. His breath fluttered and crystalized in front of him in trembling gasps. He collapsed on the nearest lawn, immediately regretting it as the shock of the cold hard ground permeated his jeans, but he didn’t exactly trust his legs enough to let him get up. 

Fingers fat with numbness fumbled over his phone screen, trying to force enough sensation to register. Jeremy’s words echoed in his head as Michael struggled to type out a text. 

_“She doesn’t know.”_

So maybe Jeremy _didn’t_ love her. Maybe he _had_ idolized her too much. Maybe he really _did_ like Michael back. 

But… _cheating on her?_ It was almost as bad as trying to drug her. Almost. 

Besides. Michael didn’t even like him. That was becoming clearer with every misted breath. He absolutely hated Jeremy. The very thought of him made his blood freeze and venom rise in his throat. The problem was, it also made his heart beat too fast around frozen slush, bile filled with butterflies. No, he didn’t like him. Unfortunately, that couldn’t stop him from loving him. 

Oh, _fuck_ his phone and his frigid fingers. He abandoned the illegible text message and mashed his thumb on the call button. It rang along with his ears. Michael sniffed. 

“Hello?” said the voice on the other end. 

He sniffled again. “Hey, Christine.”

“Michael? Is everything okay?” Shit. Of course he sounded like he was crying—Which he wasn’t!—though admittedly just barely. The stinging of his skin had been enough to distract him from impending tears.   

Michael forced his voice as steady as possible. “Yeah—Just—Outside. Cold. Nose running. Y’know.” He shoved at his dripping nose with the back of his hand, now more aware of the lump in his throat and the heat behind his eyes. Okay, maybe it wasn’t just the cold. 

“Michael!” Christine scolded. “It’s like… Well, I guess it’s a little warmer than freezing, considering all the puddles I stepped in on the way home. But still! Why are you outside?”

He shook his head. “I went for a walk, it’s nothing.” Okay. Deep breath. He ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Okay…” Christine sounded confused. Wary. “Shoot.”

Now or never. “Are you and Jeremy… Doing okay?”

“...Michael, what happened?” Fuck. Nervous confusion shifted into suspicion and worry, and Michael felt a confession climbing in his chest, clambering up the ladder of his ribs to come tumbling out of his mouth. 

“Nothing!” He said instead, biting down an acrid taste on his tongue. “I was just—You know—just—best friend duties and all that,” he lied through his teeth, forcing some sort of pep into his voice. “I gotta check up on him. Make sure you’re treating him right. I didn’t get to give you my scary Michael talk yet.”

She giggled. Thank god. “Scary Michael talk?”

“Yeah!” He said, voice cracking into the glaring gray sky above. “Like the scary dad talk, but from me.”

Christine laughed again and, wow, it made him feel better. Made the world a little brighter. Calmed the electricity in his synapses. He thought he understood for a moment what Jeremy saw in her—

 _Had_ seen in her—

Shit. 

“Well I’m sure doing my best,” she said, her smile traced in her words.

Michael swallowed, skull full of helium. “Great, well. That was it, bye!”

“Michael, wait.”

Fucking—“What?” He held his phone a few inches from his ear, thumb hovering over the ‘end call’ button. 

“Take care of yourself,” Christine said. 

“I—” His heart sank. Fluttery panic settled down into a warm rustling, pricking behind Michael’s eyes as he sighed. “I am.”

Christine’s voice was like sunshine, shuddering against his skin in contrast to the midwinter air. “You’re worried about Jeremy,” she said, “and I get it. You’re his best friend, and you’re selfless like that. But even little things. Get inside. Get warm. It’ll make a huge difference.”

Christine was worried about him. Brooke had told him before, but it still flickered in his stomach like a warm drink. And honestly? He didn’t blame her. “I—Yeah. Thanks. Bye,” Michael said, hanging up before she could stop him again and before the truth came spilling out with the tears.

Michael was crying, saltwater hot under his eyes. He pressed his lips together, desperately holding back the rolling rivulets of sobs that streamed down his cheeks. His rigid skeleton of denial crumbled to dust as gathering storm clouds finally poured out. Michael gripped roughly at his hair, tugging just on the edge of painful, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the fishhooks in his scalp could distract him from the steam in his skull. He cried silently, teeth digging into his lip as his muscles fought to fold in on themselves. 

Until Jeremy’s voice echoed in his head, “You make me happy, Michael,” and his vocal chords got in on the game. 

His sobs turned into wails, echoing off of ice-painted houses and the dripping stream in the gutter. Darkened Christmas lights swung in the icy breeze, rocking back and forth on the broken melody of Michael’s tears. 

“Alright, come inside,” said a voice from behind him. 

Michael whipped around. “Jenna!?” He shoved his palms against his face in a sorry attempt to hide his tears, voice cracking. “What are you—?”

“I live here, dumbass,” she said, holding the front door ajar. “Come inside.” 

He hiccuped. “No, really, I’m—”

Jenna didn’t take no for an answer, instead marching down the porch steps and practically dragging him into her golden kitchen. Michael’s fingers ached as feeling returned to them, burning with newly-warmed blood. 

“Okay,” Jenna said, shoving him into a dining chair, “are you done being an ass, or are we gonna have to do this the hard way?”

Michael stared after her, yanking cupboards open and clanking through dishes. “What are you talking about?” His nose was still stuffed, eyelashes caked with salt.

“Your Squip,” Jenna said, like it was obvious, plunking a pot on the stove and turning to the fridge.

“I told you. It didn’t work.”

She turned to look at him. “Michael—”

“Just—forget about it. It doesn’t even matter anymore anyway.” Michael studied the kitchen table, digging his fingernails into his palms to resist the urge to dig them into the worn wooden surface. 

“I don’t know,” Jenna said. “You seemed pretty pissed the last time I talked to you.” Michael dimly registered the sound of liquid sloshing into the pot on the stove, followed by the burner clicking on.

“Yeah, you were a dick,” said Inner Jeremy.

He knew. Of course he knew. “Sorry,” he said.

Jenna shrugged, still sifting through cabinets in his peripheral vision. “I mean, I’m the one who got on your case about standing up for yourself.”

“Yeah.”

Michael had a staring contest with the napkin holder as Jenna shuffled about her kitchen. The roasted glow seeped through Michael’s hoodie, smarting against his freezer-burnt skin. On the stove, the cauldron of his doom began to bubble, wafting sweetness through the room. The smell of it sloshed in his stomach. 

“Okay, what’s his deal?” Jenna finally asked, leaning on the counter, wooden spoon stirring the simmering potion. 

“Huh?” Michael blinked out of his growing dread. 

“Jeremy. What’s his problem now?”

“How did you—”

Jenna glared and brandished the spoon at him. “I’m not an idiot, Michael.”

“He—” Michael shook his head, still pounding with teary congestion. “Why would you think there’s a problem?”

“You were having a panic attack on my lawn,” she said, eyes back on the pot. 

“Everyone knows you’re a mess,” said Inner Jeremy.

“That wasn’t—”

The spoon clattered on the counter as Jenna went back to the cabinets. “Well whatever it was, you seem pretty fucked up, and last I checked, the only thing that can fuck you up like that is Jeremy.” She clanked two mugs down and filled them with her steaming concoction. “You want cinnamon?”

He bit back his protests of _I wasn’t fucked up,_ and _I was dealing with it._ “What?” 

“Cinnamon. In your hot chocolate.”

“I—you don’t have to—” Michael’s objection died in his throat as Jenna clicked the stove off and tapped a spice bottle out into both mugs. 

He stared down into the cocoa as she set it in front of him, cinnamon floating not-yet dissolved in the creamy chocolate. 

Michael wondered vaguely if Jenna was trying to poison him, but he figured as he inhaled the sugary steam that there were worse ways to go out than arsenic hot chocolate. 

He took a deep breath and wrapped his hands around the mug, letting warmth radiate up through his shoulders. Steam off the cup collected on his glasses, frosting his vision and clearing his sinuses. “You need to promise not to tell anyone,” he said, hardly believing the words coming out of his mouth.

“Really?” Inner Jeremy asked. “You’re telling _Jenna_ of all people?”

“Sure,” she said, sliding into the seat across from him.

“No, I mean _really_ promise.”

Jenna smirked. “Scout’s honor.”

Michael fought to keep his face neutral as Inner Jeremy snickered in the background. “What?”

She waved him off, not meeting his eyes. “Whatever. I promise.”

A smile tugged at Michael’s lips. Foreign but not forbidden. “Are you saying _you_ were a girl scout?”

“Don’t start,” Jenna said with a glowering look. “The hot chocolate is bad enough. I’m not selling any fucking Thin Mints.”

“Yeah, but you used to?” Michael teased.

She sighed and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “We were talking about Jeremy?”

Michael’s heart sank, laughter dying in his throat as the icy reminder washed in. “Right. Yeah.” He took a drink of his cocoa. It licked too-sweet over his tongue, but the cinnamon was a nice touch. “So I’ve known him my whole life, right?”

“Which is news to no one,” Jenna said, sipping at her own drink.

“But like—” Michael swallowed another saccharine sip. Now or never. “So. Basically, I had this huge fucking crush on him in like, middle school, okay?”

Jenna shrugged. “Sure.”

“You don’t sound surprised,” he said.

“I’m observant.”

“Right.” Something swirled in his stomach, gray and misty.

“You weren’t subtle at all,” Inner Jeremy said.

_Thanks, I got that._

“The whole school knew.”

The bullying voice crescendoed in Michael’s ears, congealing with the cream and chocolate in his throat. 

 _“He_ knew.”

He told Inner Jeremy to fuck off.

Michael knew he was bad at dealing with his feelings. Hell, if he hadn’t known before, he certainly did after the past few weeks. Christine could tell he’d been miserable. So could Brooke and Jenna, and of course Jeremy could too. It made sense that he would’ve been just as obvious in the early stages of his gay panic. Really, how’s a thirteen-year-old supposed to react to realizing that he wants to kiss his best friend? 

Still, he wasn’t exactly the topic of much attention back then. He was aware of Chloe and Jenna and their crowd, mostly in the way they completely ignored him, and that was just it. It wasn’t like he was bullied or anything. Quite the opposite: no one cared enough to admit he existed. It was anonymity that he’d fought to maintain because it was easier. Growing up was shitty. If he could lay low for long enough, then he wouldn’t need to deal with people taking out their shittiness on him. 

But maybe he’d underestimated her. Knowing everything about everyone was Jenna’s whole M.O. Maybe it was fortune enough to have stayed unimportant in everyone else’s eyes. No one would seek out gossip on him if they didn’t even care to know his name, so Jenna didn’t need to dish it out. 

Until Jeremy—who never had been satisfied to lay low—flipped their lives on end and suddenly Jeremy-centric gossip meant that Michael’s was resurfacing.   

But it didn’t matter anymore, because Michael didn’t like him anymore. He didn’t care _how_ perfect and electric and candy cane flavored the kiss had been. He didn’t want to date Jeremy. 

He took another drink of his hot chocolate, washing away secondhand peppermint with a silky, cinnamon-infused mouthful. 

“Well anyway,” he said, “I got over it when he was acting like a dick—”

Jenna nodded. “Because of the Squip.”

“Yeah, and because I could focus on other shit when he wasn’t around, and I realized he’d never like me back and I was okay with that.”

“Sure you were,” Inner Jeremy mocked. Michael drowned him out with another gulp of cocoa.

“I’m assuming something changed,” Jenna said.

“Fuck _yes,_ something changed!” Michael slammed his mug down, ignoring the shock of hot liquid on his hand. “He likes me back now!”

Jenna pushed the napkin holder closer to him. “And Christine?”

He shook his head, taking a napkin. “She has no idea.” He mopped up the cocoa as best as he could. “And like? Jeremy’s always been a bit of an asshole, but—” He took a deep breath and crumpled the now-damp napkin in his hand. “This is like, worse?”

“Michael,” Jenna said, but he wasn’t listening anymore. 

“And I _thought_ I was over my crush,” he said, tearing at the sodden napkin to hide how much his hands were shaking, “but it came back, and I don’t _want_ to be in love with him—” Michael blinked hard, fighting against the moisture pricking again in his eyes. “I’m _not_ in love with him. I really just want to be friends again, and he’s over here cheating on his girlfriend—” he ripped the napkin in half— “and fucking _kissing me—”_ tore at it furiously— “and I _don’t know what to do.”_ Michael dropped the napkin shreds, letting confetti litter the tabletop. His hands balled themselves into fists as he swallowed down another bubble of tears. 

He could feel Jenna’s eyes on him as shaking fingers wound around his mug and lifted it to his lips—When did it get so heavy? He sipped as carefully as he could, letting the warm liquid erode the lump in his throat. “What did you do when he kissed you?” she asked after a moment.

Michael lowered the mug, watching his nerves ripple through the ceramic into the chocolate. “I—nothing?”

“You didn’t stand up for yourself?” Jenna said.

“Wha—?”

“Did you _ask_ him about any of it?” Michael opened his mouth to protest. _Of course_ he asked. Did Jeremy do that on purpose? Did Christine know? “Besides the technicalities?” Jenna clarified, and his mouth closed.

“I don’t think I understand,” he said instead.

Jenna sighed, surveying him over the rim of her cup. Lips pursed, she looked at him like he was an antique up for appraisal. The way he looked over a case of vintage soda to see if it was really worth the outrageous prices the guy at Spencer’s always charged. “How long did it take you to run away?” she asked.

If Michael had been taking a drink, he would’ve choked. Instead, his throat swelled shut with a fresh wave of indignant tears. “Why are you assuming I ran away?”

Her gaze was steely, in a way that could only be described as ‘you’re kidding, right?’ “I found you sobbing in my front yard,” she said. Deadpan.

Inner Jeremy took the opportunity to remind him he was pathetic.

Michael sighed. “Like… two minutes?” 

“So he doesn’t know about your feelings.”

He shook his head. “I mean, I never told him. But it also…” The thoughts tasted funny on his tongue, not quite ready to escape. “It just. I don’t know.” Something itched in the back of his mind. “This isn’t like him. He couldn’t even _talk_ to Christine for the longest time. I don’t—There’s no way he’d…” 

All at once, Michael heard the words he was saying. It wasn’t like him. If there was one thing that Michael knew about, it was Jeremy. His awkward, nerdy best-friend-since-diapers. For twelve years, if you asked Michael how Jeremy would react to literally _anything,_ he’d have been able to tell you. 

And if you’d asked him how he’d react to a sudden crush on his best friend—Well, firstly Michael would’ve laughed in your face, because Jeremy _didn’t_ have a crush on him, and he never would. But secondly, he’d know that Jeremy, a walking tower of nerves and self-deprecation, wouldn’t do anything about it. He’d do absolutely everything he could to come off as cool and collected and _totally not in love with you, what are you talking about?_ to the point where Michael had almost let himself believe, in his weakest moments, that Jeremy _did_ like him back, and was just refusing to make things weird. 

Literally the only time Michael couldn’t predict Jeremy’s every move was when the Squip was involved. When he’d strode around school like a marionette, Brooke dangling off his arm like a trophy he didn’t want. And yes, that unpredictability had carried over after the Play. He’d been able to ask Christine out with apparent success, but—

But Jeremy had spent literal years working up the nerve to talk to her, a massive span of time, which Michael had watched him agonize over every second of. So, if Jeremy actually suddenly liked Michael instead...

Jenna was smirking. “He wouldn’t make the first move,” she said.

“Yeah.”

The only time Jeremy had ever had the balls to make the first move was when the Squip was pulling the strings, so… 

“You should talk to him,” said Jenna.

Michael swallowed. “That’s what I was _trying_ to do,” he said. “I had this whole speech about wanting to be friends and wanting things to stop being weird and—”

 _“No.”_ Jenna’s now-empty mug hit the table with a clang, her friendly calm evaporating into hardass battle mode. “You need to _talk_ to him. You need to confront your bullshit. Both of you.”

“I don’t—”

“Dancing around each other isn’t doing either of you any good. I don’t care if you need to write it down first or fucking whatever. Air out your dirty laundry.”

“But—”

“You’re an idiot. You’re both idiots.” She stood, gathering her mug. “You’re not seeing the shit right in front of you, and you never will unless you suck it up and talk it out.”

“What am I even supposed to say?” Michael watched mournfully as Jenna swiped the last dregs of cold cocoa away from him, stuffing his shredded napkin into the cup.

“Fuck if I know,” she said, glaring down at him. “I think that’s your problem.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

“No, I mean it.” She dumped the napkin pieces into the trash. “It’s gonna be tempting to fuck it up. Neither of you are good at this.” Jenna piled the dishes in the sink and looked back at him, hands on her hips. “But,” she said, “you’re gonna have to tell the voices in your head to leave you alone long enough to sort it out. No easy way out. No ignoring it.”

“You’re not gonna fix it,” Inner Jeremy fought back. “Every time you try, you only make things worse.”

“No way back to how things were?” Michael asked.

Jenna sighed and propped her elbows on the island, leaning over at him. “This _is_ the way back to how things were. Just don’t let your brain keep lying to you and you’ll be fine.”

“I haven’t been lying to myself.”

She smiled and turned back to the kitchen, stuffing cocoa powder and cinnamon away on a spice rack. “I didn’t say you had.”

“...Right.” Michael had no clue how she planned to justify that paradox, but the prospect of confronting Jeremy again after such a recent and spectacular failure gnawed with enough anxiety to overshadow the desire to call her out. 

“I’d do it ASAP, if I were you,” she called over her shoulder, shoving the sugar back into its place high in the pantry.

“This is a bad idea,” Inner Jeremy warned him.

Michael shook his head. “Yeah, no, right. Okay.”

His fingers fumbled over the keyboard, hands shaking and heart in his throat. His hoodie collar felt too tight, jugular throbbing against the hooded neckline. Inner Jeremy protested in Michael’s skull, saying he would only make things worse, that he wouldn’t be able to handle himself when he was around Jeremy again, that Jeremy wouldn’t want to talk about _anything_ after he ran off on him. 

“You rejected him. Why would he even want to look at you again?”

Michael just grit his teeth and plugged out a text, spurred forward by Jenna’s occasional encouraging smile back at him. 

Jenna had said he was allowed to be selfish, and Michael took it too far. Yes, he was more than Jeremy’s sidekick, but that was the thing. Instead of breaking off from his dependency, he’d made everything worse. He hadn’t moved on from anything. Instead, he revolved around Jeremy, gravity and his own stubbornness keeping them both tied down. His crush was back worse than ever, he was still struggling to make new friends, the Squip was _still_ a fucking problem, apparently, and he’d made everything with Jeremy far too messy to ever go back to normal. 

Well, fine. Normal was too far away, but maybe he could still have the next best thing. He’d make it right. They’d both be happy again. 

No matter what.

“Hey, can you come over?” he texted. 

Michael stood, chair clacking against the table legs as he shoved himself to his feet. 

“Thanks,” he called to Jenna as he made his way out the front door. She waved back. 

His phone buzzed in his pocket as he stomped through the winding neighborhood streets. Frosty grass glittered in the waking streetlights, the sky like steel except for the final scarlet dregs of sunset. Michael made his way back to his PT Cruiser in the otherwise abandoned school parking lot, decision stiff in his jaw and cool in his veins. Jeremy’s response shone on his phone screen,

“Sure, on my way,”

And Michael was just happy he’d thought to get some extra Mountain Dew Red for emergencies. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! This one only took me a week and-a-half instead of a month and-a-half! I know it might not make a difference to you, but I'm pretty proud of that!  
> Anyway, shit's gonna go down next chapter. 
> 
> I adore feedback, so please feel free to tell me what you think!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wrong soda.

There was a time when traipsing downstairs to find Jeremy settled on the edge of his bed would’ve been perfectly normal. Hell, there was a time when finding his basement empty had left Michael’s chest feeling very much the same. This time, though, the sight of his best friend perched between Pikachu throw pillows, picking at his nails and fiddling with the ends of his sleeves, hair fluffed across his forehead and around ears still rose-tipped by cold—it was like trying to breathe normally with a face-full of blustery winter wind. 

“Hi, Mikey.”

Michael took a deep breath. “Hey,” he said, forcing away the roaring in his ears. “Soda?”

Jeremy smiled and his posture relaxed against the pillows, like he’d been waiting for permission. “Sure. You got any of that Ghostbusters stuff left?” Both he and Pikachu seemed unperturbed by how much Michael was struggling to exhale. 

Michael stepped between beanbags and upturned bowls of popcorn to make his way to his mini fridge. “Nah, it was a ripoff. Turns out it was just normal Hi-C with green food dye.”

“That’s… not what you thought it was?”

He couldn’t stop his smile, sore as it was in his stiff lips. “No, dude. Real Ecto Cooler is tangerine flavored. This was the same normal orange shit.”

A glance back at Jeremy showed him making a Face, lips drawn together in a grimace and a slight wrinkle in his nose. Fantastic. Not distracting at all. “That sounds. Like. Not much of a difference.”

“Ecto Cooler is a  _ commodity, _ are you kidding? I could get a lifetime supply of the plain stuff for like twenty bucks at McDonalds.” Michael ducked his head into the fridge, pushing between twelve-pack cartons. “Nope, I’ve got Crystal Pepsi, like three different flavors of Mountain Dew, root beer, and uh…” Out from the depths of the fridge, Michael pulled a glass bottle of rust-colored soda. “Bacon?”

Jeremy made a noise somewhere between disgust and amusement. “Bacon?”

“I forgot about that one. This novelty soda shop moved in downtown and I think I went native.”

He laughed. “Gross, dude. Never mind.”

“You sure?” Michael’s fist clenched around the neck of the bacon soda bottle, itching to grab instead for the Mountain Dew Red inches away.

“Yeah, man. It’s cool.”

Michael replaced the soda and closed the fridge, turning to his friend, lounged amongst decades’ collection of geeky shit. Jeremy’s lazy smile nestled itself in a familiar place, staring at the insulation-coated ceiling. 

But it wasn’t Jeremy. Not really. This was Jeremy with wires running between his bones, pulling his fingers still where they lay folded on his chest. This was the Jeremy who had torn a path through the Junior class of Middleborough, started his own zombie apocalypse, and, after the dust settled, pulled at Michael’s heartstrings despite the walls he’d built for himself. 

This was the Jeremy who decided to show up on Michael’s doorstep, pristine and composed. Who decided to rewrite the script of their entire lives. The Jeremy whose smile was a little too practiced, posture a little too straight, eyesight just on the edge of electric. 

The Jeremy who’d kissed him.  

“It’s uh… It’s not, really,” Michael said.

Jeremy sighed and sat up. “Look, we can pretend it never happened.”

“I don’t think we can.”

“Really, I should’ve asked you first—”

“Why did you do it?” Michael asked. 

Jeremy frowned. “I already said, didn’t I?”

“Okay. Fine.” Jeremy wouldn’t play along. Fucking  _ fine. _ They were just going to pretend it was all Normal. Like Jeremy was acting at all of his own volition, and that, even if he was, Michael was going to be  _ okay  _ with any of it.

Yeah, he didn’t think so.

_ “How _ did you do it?” he said.

Jeremy ran a hand through his hair. “You were there.”

“Exactly!” Something in Michael cracked. Months of confusion, brittle with complacency, finally shattered, melted, and began to simmer into anger between his ribs. “You just fucking  _ kissed  _ me with no warning, without telling your  _ girlfriend,  _ and—!” He whined, grasping at air like he could pull his slipping sanity back into line. “Jesus, Jeremy. Even if you  _ do _ like me, you have to  _ know _ better than that.”

His mouth did that fishy thing. The thing that Michael had always found far more endearing than was okay, especially in situations like this. “Why would you think I don’t like you?” Jeremy asked, a layer of hurt behind his glasses. 

“That’s not the point!” Michael nearly punched the fucking wall, running on a steam engine he hadn’t realized he’d been slowly fueling for god knows how long. “What the fuck is wrong with you? What happened to tearing up your love letters?”

Jeremy stood, leaving Pikachu behind to spectate. “Michael…”

“Jeremy! I’ve loved you since middle school, and  _ god, _ I hate you so much, but there you go. Just—!” He took a deep breath against a swirling storm of sudden sobs. “Fuck. This isn’t what I wanted!”

“I’ll break up with her,” Jeremy said, stepping closer.

“No. Shit—”

“Why not!?”

“You can’t just dump her, you’re better than that!”

“Is he?” Inner Jeremy asked. 

_ Fucking—  _

Michael wanted him to be. There. That was the answer. Michael wanted Jeremy to be a decent person, no matter what recent memory tried to argue. 

Hell,

He wanted Jeremy to be better than he feared he was, but more than that, he wanted Jeremy to be better than  _ him. _ Michael was the hot mess idiot who fell in love with his best friend, who couldn’t even get it in him to be really and truly mad, who couldn’t fucking stand up for himself against the one person he was supposed to be closest to, even when he knew it wasn’t really him. And he wanted Jeremy to be better than that. To be different. To be happy without Michael so that maybe he could move on. 

“I’m trying to work with you, here! Do you want this or not?” Jeremy flung his hands around, searching for words that Michael wasn’t able to help him with. “God, Michael, do you  _ like _ beating around the bush like this?”

“This is wrong.”

He took another step towards him. “Well, sure. It might feel a little incesty at  _ first, _ but—”

“What  _ happened _ to you?” Michael asked, stumbling back.

Inner Jeremy’s voice reverberated in his head. “I got better,” he said.

“No,” Michael said. “No you didn’t.”

“What?”

Determination rose in Michael’s veins. “Okay, I know you’re gonna fight me on this, but we beat it last time, we can do it again.” He turned back to the fridge, pulling his last bottle of stashed Red out from behind the root beer and bacon joke soda.

“Michael, it’s  _ me,”  _ Jeremy said, following his path through the junk food labyrinth.

“Yeah,” Michael poked a finger into his chest. “And that thing’s in your head.” He eyed the label. This one looked legit. “Second wave of the boss battle. It’s fine. Two player game, right? We just need to beat it back into a scrap heap.”

Distantly, Michael heard the door open at the top of the basement stairs, and from far away, the telltale voice of counterfeit soda called out, “Michael? Who are you talking to?”

Who—? 

He was shoved suddenly against the wall, tripped over his beanbag to have the breath knocked out of him against paint-peeled concrete. Jeremy forced his way into his mouth, lapping at his teeth and ripping at his tongue. Rough hands tore their way into his hair. Michael’s knees buckled. His hands flew up to grasp at Jeremy’s sweater. Every nerve stood on end, ripping through with seizure. Furious teeth nipped against his skin as his glasses bit into the bridge of his nose. 

Jeremy dragged him along when he pulled away, eyes glinting as he licked his lips. 

“You’re my favorite person, Michael,” he said, mumbled against Michael’s slack jawed mouth. The words rang in his head in unison, layered over with autotune. Inner Jeremy stood before him, words soaking into the basement from Michael’s gray matter. Electromagnetism buzzed between his ears, pricking at Jeremy’s touch, twisting into his skin.

Jeremy’s glasses were askew, sloppily framing the carnival-bright electrode gaze. He smiled, dazed and sharp, tugging at the static-charged strands of Michael’s hair. Michael swallowed his involuntary whine, mouth full of Jeremy’s metallic mint breath.

“You’re not Jeremy,” he said, looking at the real-life ripoff Hi-C like a deer in the headlights. Green food dye passing orange for tangerine. 

Wrong soda.

Someone thumped down the last few basement stairs. “Michael! What—?”

Wrong Squip.

Jeremy smirked at him. Nose-to-nose. Cocked his head. “So?” Voltage bled from his eyes, tinting his skin feverish cyan.

Michael swallowed. “You’re not Doc Brown either.”

The Squip released him, shivering and gasping, only partially on his feet. It pulled back, turning a sneering scan over Michael’s prone form. “There tend to be technical difficulties when the user is not conscious during calibration. The default mode can be scrambled and overwritten by the subconscious. Fortunately for you, this happened to coincide with your primary objective.”

“Dude, are you okay?” Jeremy asked from his peripheral vision— _ Jeremy. _ Actually Jeremy. 

“My… objective?” Michael had cottonmouth. 

“I am programmed to assist my host in whatever way necessary to reach his or her primary goal.” The Squip pulled at the cuffs of its sleeves, the cardigan glitching out and smoothing over into a fitted sweatshirt. Stripes dissolved into the artsy visage of a deceased rapper. He took off his glasses, peering through them as if checking for smudges. “To beat their final boss, so to speak,” it said, and the glasses disintegrated into a storm of pixels.

Michael stared up at his best friend looking down his nose at him. Hair slicked, clothes computer-generated to make him cooler. To drive a rift between them. The very Jeremy who didn’t love him. Not at all. The Jeremy who had nearly convinced him no one did. “I didn’t—”

“You wanted to further relations with Jeremy Heere, yes?”

“I wanted things to go back to  _ normal.” _

“Michael, you’re scaring me,” the  _ real _ Jeremy said, hovering just out of reach.

The Squip narrowed its eyes. “According to all records of observational data, humans are rarely willing to—what’s the saying?— _ bury the hatchet _ so easily. Your memory files indicated significant firewalls against mending your relationship status, and, as non-linear time travel is still confined to the imagination, that would have been—simply put—impossible.”

“You’re lying,” Michael said.

“I’m pretty sure I can tell if I’m scared or not!” Jeremy said, eyes darting about, dancing around Michael’s private, possessed argument.

_ “Please,”  _ the Squip said with a scoff. “Do you really think he would’ve ever loved you?”

No.  _ Obviously  _ Michael didn’t ever expect to have his feelings returned. That was the _ whole problem. _ Yes, he wanted to be closer to Jeremy again. But that didn’t mean he’d expected or needed or  _ whatever— _ for them to ever get beyond where they were before. “I didn’t ever  _ want  _ him to.”

“You can’t lie to me, Michael,” it said.

Michael’s mind latched onto that. He’d—He’d heard that before. From that same voice, with the same face. Sitting barely six feet from where it hovered now. 

_ We practically share a brain. _

It was layered over with mysterious Mario music, throbbing with anger and staggered, glowing cubes.

“That was _ you.”  _ It had snuck up on him, seeking in when he wasn’t hiding but didn’t want to be found. It had burrowed its way inside, speaking from all directions, circling and hunting like a coyote, shrieking in every octave to multiply and confuse him. 

“That was _who?”_ Jeremy asked, now kneeling near him on the basement floor, ripping at the edge of the carpet salvage. Still not touching. Still just out of reach. “Snap out of it, dude.”

_ “He _ left you alone,” said the Squip. “He left you to  _ die. _ Isn’t this better?”

Fire roared in Michael’s ears and under his skin. “He said he wanted to fix things too.” 

“Did he?”

“He kissed—”

_ “Did  _ he? Really?” It loomed over Michael, burning and bearing down on him like a sentence to the electric chair. It sparked at the edges. “You don’t  _ need  _ him. He’s been wrong for you all along.”

Michael’s head zapped into scrambles, synapses jumping with taser energy and refusing to connect. “Then why did you—?” 

“I am programmed for customer satisfaction, but the probability of accomplishing your primary objective was point-o’-two percent. Protocol dictates that secondary measures be taken.” The Squip hung above him, sparking with crescendo inside his head. The dubstep electricity was deafening, blinding him with a bright turquoise migraine. “It’s the only way to achieve what you want,” it said.

From far away, someone said, “Michael, I swear to  _ god _ if you don’t look at me, I’m gonna tell your moms where your weed stash is,” and Michael felt a shove, warm and sturdy. It grounded out the current in his bones and the insanity under his skin.

He blinked out of a maze of motherboards and diamonds. “Jeremy?” 

_ Jeremy. _

“Jeremy, oh my god.”

Jeremy let out a sigh of relief. He was pale, his fingertips trembling a hair’s breadth away from Michael’s shoulder. “Jesus Christ, man, you look like something out of a horror movie.”

“You—you’re here.” Michael’s senses slowly faded into tune. Jeremy was sitting beside him. Solid as ever. His heart beat like it was plugged into a defibrillator, but the tiny space between the two of them was free of static and sugared silver peppermint. “Why are you here?”

Jeremy pulled his hand back, and Michael’s hair stood back up on end. “You texted me? Seriously, what’s wrong?”

“I wouldn’t tell him, if I were you,” the Squip said, flashing him a memory reel of himself—cornering Jeremy, scolding Jeremy, defaming the Squips in all they stood for, refusing to help until he got what  _ he  _ wanted, refusing to make up after the fact.

There was no way Jeremy was going to help him after everything, but—But there was no other option. His muscles ached with copper wiring, laced through with puppet strings. His fingers itched, hands empty. “Jer, the Red—” He glanced around, lungs heaving. “I had a bottle around here—somewhere. I—” Of course. The kiss. He’d dropped it. It could’ve rolled anywhere. “You have to help me.”

“Hypocrite,” the Squip spat.

“Okay,” Jeremy said.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Where is he?”

Michael opened his mouth to respond, but pain jolted up his spine, jerking him forward. His hands gripped roughly at Jeremy, stiff as if moved by joystick as he surged forward.

And kissed him. 

It wasn’t anything like the first two. This Jeremy— _ Real  _ Jeremy—was, honestly, not the best kisser. Their noses mushed together, glasses clicking with the sound of scraping glass. Jeremy froze in shock, fighting against Michael’s sudden grip. His mouth was stiff, pressed shut and pulling away, but Michael’s remote-controlled limbs held fast. 

Real Jeremy didn’t taste like candy canes. He didn’t taste like much of anything except a hint of coffee breath. He was soft and solid. This kiss had no fireworks. No sparks. Just the heat of Jeremy’s shocked blush, warming steadily under Michael’s cyborg-stiff fingers.

Until Michael’s consciousness caught up, kicking him in the gut with panic and surging in his chest, dropping him like a brick back to Earth. He shoved Jeremy away, an acrid taste at the back of his tongue.

“Leave him out of this!” he cried, tearing at his hair as another jolt of lightning shot into his brain stem.

“Michael—” His vision flickered with static, but he was able to make out Jeremy, knocked on his ass, hand covering his mouth.

“I thought this was what you  _ wanted.”  _ The Squip’s voice devolved into overexposed static, digging into his ears like the sonic equivalent of high-power lasers. The television screamed its way between channels, on fire with a demonic air raid siren. Basement lights flickered across a spectrum of impossible colors. Michael’s blue screen brain screeched a dial tone.

“Jeremy,” he choked out.

“Yeah?”

“Go away. Get out of here.”

Jeremy brought his hand away from his mouth. “No.”

“What?”

He stumbled to his feet. “Look, I think I owe you one, right? Besides,” he said, treading carefully around the cluttered basement, around to where the Squip has kissed Michael on the wall, a half-grimace on his face, “when you love somebody…”

Between ragged breaths and moments of stabbing headache, Michael had a sudden flashback to Mr. Heere, pantsless and oblivious to Michael’s marijuana-dulled misery. The conversation that had him running to Jeremy’s rescue. That had come full-circle, apparently, as Jeremy snuck between beanbags and piled shit to the discarded bottle of Mountain Dew. 

Michael laughed, lightheaded. “No way.”

Sharp pain struck through him again, speared through his core. Michael’s spine was a lightning rod. His ears rang and his vision devolved into 32-bit technicolor. He was on the ground, tongue tipped with blood, basement reeking of burnt hair. His throat stung with screams he couldn’t hear over the tearing of scrap metal in his brain.

The Squip seemed to agree with him.  _ No way. _

Michael’s body went white-hot, vibrating from the inside. A sword drove itself between his eyes. The earth pitched sideways. An out-of-tune orchestral cacophony screeched behind his eyes, violin strings twanging in his chest and setting him on edge. The faulty USB port in the base of his spine twisted and rusted. His skeleton fused into a corkscrew, slowly crinkling in on itself, hissing with the sound of scraping, mangled metal. Michael’s vision pricked with pixelation, a white-noise blizzard of blueish-green. The Squip howled. Cackled. Loomed amidst turquoise flames.

The basement crumbled down around him as Michael swallowed a hurricane full of pain. Everything was spinning. Everything except Jeremy’s face, twisted and laughing, demented and digital.

He was ready to die. Ready to let it rip him apart into pure electric agony. Michael could barely breathe for the screams clawing at his throat. 

And then a pair of hands—shaky, clammy, solid—gripped at his arms. Fumbled over embroidery-patched fleece to hoist him upright. Through radioactive tears, Jeremy’s face faded into view. Real Jeremy’s face. And if Michael weren’t already crying, he might’ve sobbed at the urgent understanding in his eyes.

His lips were pressed closed in a thin smile, nervous and encouraging with just a hint of panic. So,  _ so  _ Jeremy. He swiped cool fingers under the rim of Michael’s glasses, neutralizing the hot electricity in his skin and flowing from his eyes. Michael swallowed. 

A tilt of Jeremy’s head.  _ Are you ready?  _

Michael nodded, weak. He didn’t ask what Jeremy meant, what he was doing, why he was suddenly leaning in. He just let Jeremy’s mouth meet his, stiff and nervous as the fingers curling around his ear. He inhaled, letting the soft smell of his best friend flood his lungs and dull out the thunderstorm petrichor in his skull. 

And then Jeremy was opening his mouth, pressing in further. Cool, sweet liquid rushed across Michael’s tongue as his jaw dropped. A static shock danced down his vertebrae.

Oh. 

_ Shit— _ Right. 

He pushed Jeremy away and swallowed. The Mountain Dew Red burned his throat. Carbonation rose in his nose. 

For a moment, the world was silent. Stray pixels fluttered in the edges of his vision like volcano ash. Jeremy sat a breath away, lips parted slightly, watching, waiting, just out of reach. 

A twang behind Michael’s eyes. At the base of his skull. A glitch tore through his nervous system. 

The Squip screamed. 

A spear drove into Michael’s head.

He went blind.

The word went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha oops. It's like 5 am.
> 
> Okay, so I know the kiss to force-feed the Red has been used before, but honestly, I couldn’t think of another option with Jeremy being the only one fully un-Squipped. It is also kinda based upon the fact that that’s what I’d expected him to do with Christine the very first time I listened to ‘The Play.’ Sorry it wasn’t as original as I would’ve liked, but there you go.
> 
> This chapter had me doing actual research on Ecto Cooler, which I was surprised to learn had its own section on the Hi-C Wikipedia page. It was actually a thing very recently (2016?), but they were significantly under-supplied, so there was a major black market for the stuff. Like the Twinkie thing from ages ago.
> 
> I thought, when I wrote the “I got better” line for Inner Jer, that it was a fun angsty callback to earlier. Like, chapter 2 or something. Then I double-checked it and found out it was actually a line I wrote in a completely different fic. So never mind, I guess.
> 
> I adore feedback, so please feel free to tell me what you think!
> 
> This is a lot of notes. I’ll leave now.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know how when you watched too much Doctor Who in middle school, you ended up with a British accent for a few weeks?”  
> ...  
> “It’s like your British accent. But in my head.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHAT’S UP FRIENDS, I FINISHED IT!  
> This was fun. I know I didn’t write most of it very quickly, but I’m gonna go take a nap for the next two thousand years anyway.
> 
> Enjoy!

Medical-bright light burned through Michael’s eyelids. His head ached like someone had decided to jam ball bearings into his temples. His limbs were heavy. God, he felt like a statue, like someone had hollowed him out and refilled him with cement. Leaden fingers twitched against something rough and constricting, weighing on his lap like a coat of snow over his marble flesh. Consciousness flickered across his mind, trickling slowly like text typed on a sticky keyboard.

“Feels like you’re missing a part of yourself, doesn’t it?” a voice said from far away.

Michael groaned. “What?” His teeth were heavy too, his tongue swollen fat in his mouth.

“Hurts like a motherfucker too.”

“Jeremy?”

Michael’s eyes fluttered open into piercing whiteness. Through fuzzy, sun-spotted eyes, he saw Jeremy smiling down at him. “Hey. Rich also asked me what people were saying about the fire when I woke up, but I guess it isn’t really relevant this time.”

Michael blinked. He watched Jeremy’s mouth move, none of the sound reaching his ears. His sinuses were stuffed with Jell-O, a beach ball of death spinning somewhere in his brain. “He—what?”

Jeremy’s eyes lit up. His smile stretched into something devious. “Oh, _man,_ you’re high.”

He licked his lips, brain still buffering. Everything was numb, but it wasn’t a weed high. Michael felt like how bubblegum smelled: heavy and sticky and saccharine. The inside of his mouth was puffed and tingly. Soft brush strokes touched the edges of his mind, covering everything in a lilac haze. “I—probably, but—where am I?”

Jeremy’s face suddenly fell. His voice dropped, hushed and strained. “I’m so sorry Michael,” he said, all serious. His lips quivered. “The doctor’s out in the hallway talking to your moms. You had a terrible accident… He says you’ll never walk again.”

“...You’re an asshole, you know that?”

The gloomy facade shattered, cracked open into a mischievous grin. “How fucked up would that be, though?”

Michael threw an arm over his face, blocking out the cold light. “Man, I thought you could _act.”_

Jeremy stuck his tongue out at him. “I never said I was any good at improv. Cut me some slack.” 

He was blurry around the edges, sitting just on the edge of Michael’s nearsightedness. 

Michael swallowed. “Jeremy?”

“Yeah?”

“Seriously. What happened?”

Jeremy’s confidence dissolved, going up in smoke as his face caught fire with blush. “Uh,” he stuttered. “Well, I, uh…”

“Jer—”

“When did you take it?” Jeremy asked.

And there was the last piece of the puzzle. Michael was in the hospital. He’d had a seizure. Fucking— 

“Like… a few weeks ago?” The math didn’t add up quite right in his anesthesia-fogged brain, but… Yeah. A few weeks sounded about right.

“God, why?”

Michael rubbed at his eyes. “I don’t know. It was stupid. I was—” He let his head fall back into the brick-like pillows. He was lonely, angry, desperate—Really, he didn’t know how to phrase it. It felt like a century ago, not a fortnight. “Look, it doesn’t matter.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jeremy asked, and Michael snorted involuntarily.

“You were kinda being a dick,” he said.

Jeremy’s face scrunched up. His brow furrowed and he bit his lip. He chewed at his tongue for a response. Michael almost felt bad.

“Did you tell _anyone?”_

Michael shrugged. “I thought it didn’t work. I kinda forgot about it,” he admitted.

“How—? Michael, you had a computer in your head.”

“Yeah.”

Jeremy just stared at him for a moment, hospital lights glinting on his glasses, and Michael was suddenly very annoyed at the fogginess of his vision. 

“Who did it look like?” Jeremy asked, and Michael’s heart plummeted into his stomach. He suddenly wished he was deaf instead of blind.

“No one important.”

Or both. Both could be good. 

Jeremy decided to push his luck. “C’mon, man, it can’t be that bad. Rich still won’t tell me who his was, but I’m like ninety-eight percent sure he was lying when he said it was Evil Kermit.” Michael didn’t look at him, instead searching every nearby surface for his glasses. No dice, but he did find some of the doctor’s notes—his heart rate was mostly normal, though he didn’t see how that had any effect on anything. 

Jeremy continued, “Mine offered to look like a sexy anime cat girl, so really—”

“It did _not.”_ The clipboard clattered back onto the table.

Jeremy’s blush seemed to glow red against the white-washed walls. “Look, there’s no way yours could be more embarrassing than that, so—”

“You said it was Keanu!”

Jeremy shoved him. “Shut up! It was! I told it not to do the other thing.” Except they were both laughing, and it was the lightest Michael’s chest had felt in as long as he could remember. 

The euphoria was drowned out by sharp pain when he tried to sit up to shove Jeremy in retaliation. 

 _“Fuck,”_ Michael hissed, a corkscrew turning in his spine, headache biting between his eyes again. “Ow—God—Damnit.” He slumped back down.

“You okay?” Jeremy asked, hands fluttering over Michael, fumbling at how to help.

Michael groaned, slipping between the sheets. Fuck—okay. 

He moved to bat Jeremy away, but found himself gripping at his trembling hands instead, grounding himself with the touch of warm skin. 

Jeremy squeezed his hand. He took a deep breath.

“You know how when you watched too much Doctor Who in middle school, you ended up with a British accent for a few weeks?” Michael asked.

Jeremy groaned. “Oh god, yeah. Don’t remind me.” He laced their fingers together.

“You wore a bow tie for a whole semester.”

Jeremy glared at him. “Yeah, well you were emo.”

Michael waved him off with their joined hands. “It was seventh grade. So was everyone. But…” He faltered. Inner Jeremy was silent. Obviously. But that didn’t stop him from expecting an interruption. “The accent.”

Jeremy rubbed his thumb over the back of Michael’s hand. “Yeah?”

Michael’s attention flickered at the touch, his eyes locked on the blur of movement. His mouth felt even more numb than before. “We’ve spent a shitload of time together, right?”

The delicate skin-on-skin tracing stopped. “I—well, not lately.”

“No, but like—” Michael pulled his hand away to run through his hair. “Fuck—” The words didn’t make sense in his drugged-up head, but he prayed Jeremy would have some idea of what he meant, because he couldn’t just fucking say it. “It’s like your British accent,” he said. “But in my head.”

“You—” Jeremy’s reaching hand stopped midair. “Oh.”

“And it’s not like it was a new thing.”

Jeremy pulled away, hands collecting in his lap. “It… Looked like—”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“So I guess I didn’t realize it was _actually_ someone else’s voice.”

Jeremy picked at his nails, scraping keratin clicking in the thin silence between them. “So, when you were talking to it—”

"It uh…” Michael cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

“The _he_ you were talking about, was…”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I mean. I kinda figured,” Jeremy said, balling his hands into fists, threadbare fingernails buried in trembling flesh. “I mean, I would do that too. With your voice. Before, uh…” He gestured vaguely around the room. At his head. “You know.”

Michael closed his eyes. “Yeah.”

Nausea fluttered foggy in his esophagus. Everything was fuzzy. Frosted over. His thoughts were still drugged and sluggish. His vision was milky, glasses stashed somewhere out of reach. Inner Jeremy was silent.

He’d let a virus into his motherboard. Let it corrupt his hard drive. Michael fell into the cool darkness of his eyelids and wondered just how much he’d been picked apart. It was… uncomfortable. To realize he’d been flayed open and scoured through, peeked and prodded at like a line of code. 

The truth of it fell together like Tetris blocks. Inner Jeremy wouldn’t be coming back. The sequences were just scrambled enough. Just past the edge of being irreparable. 

Which—Was good! The Squip was gone. It’s not like he’d had it long enough for it to really have much echoing power. But the last zigzagging tetromino fell into place with the sinking suspicion that the scars would be bad enough that Jeremy’s voice would stay firmly out of his head for good. Well, for good or bad.  

God, he felt even worse for Jeremy now. It really must’ve felt like he was missing a part of himself.

Maybe it still did. Maybe Michael shouldn’t have been surprised.

Michael squinted his eyes open to see Jeremy looking over him again. “Christine says hi,” he said with a small smile. “She wanted to come see you in person, but she’s been super busy with her audition prep, and she’s trying to plan a cast party for Midsummer, and—”

“It’s fine,” Micael said, ignoring the curdling stone in his stomach.

“You’re totally invited, by the way,” Jeremy told him, and the resentment shifted sideways.

“No, really—”

“Dude, she’s actively _insisting,”_ and Jeremy was grinning again. “She’s already given your name out for Secret Santa.” 

Michael rolled his eyes. “You know what? Fine. I’m assuming that means I need to get a present for someone?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Beats me, man. I think she might’ve texted you?”

“God, what does a guy like me get for the likes of Chloe Valentine and Jake Dillinger?” Michael said, a smirk pulling oddly at the corner of his mouth. He forced himself to sit up—shifting slowly this time. 

Where was—? Shit, his phone must’ve been hidden on the same unknown multiverse plane as his glasses. 

“How’s she doing?” he asked, searching and sifting between the sandpaper sheets.

“Christine? Good, uh…” Jeremy cleared his throat. “We’re… We’re figuring things out. She knows I’m still...” He rolled the word around for a second. “Recovering. We’ve agreed to take it slow.”

Michael twisted the blanket absentmindedly, fiddling the same way Jeremy— _Real_ Jeremy—had with his lunch the other day. “She’s giving you space?”

Jeremy chuckled and let his head fall backwards to stare at the ceiling. “You know, it’s funny? Last time I was here—” he gestured around the hospital room— “I thought I’d never want to be alone with my thoughts ever again.” He smiled. “But yeah.”

“You uh…” Michael swallowed, bat wings flapping in his ribcage. Jeremy… Jeremy looked… Not happy. But content. A calm sort of happiness that was just for himself, for once. 

But he had to be sure. 

The blanket was pulled taut between his fists, chafing against his skin as Michael continued, “I’m assuming you told her about—” He shook his head. “I mean, obviously she knows you helped me get rid of it.”

Jeremy looked at him. “Yeah,” he said.

Michael’s intestines squirmed. The heavy opioid high was wearing off, apparently. He ducked his head. “Sorry.”

Jeremy sat up straighter. “No!” he assured him. “She was pretty cool about it.” He smiled, and Michael’s fluttery insides calmed, the birds and butterflies perching somewhere far away. “Said she admired my initiative or something.”

“Your boundless wit?” Michael said with a smirk.

Jeremy laughed. “Or something equally Shakespearean, yeah.”

Michael chuckled with him, hands smoothing over the splintery grain of the blankets, straightening them out. “She’s pretty great for you, you know.”

“What?”

“Just.” Michael shrugged and turned his attention back to the racks of medical equipment, searching even through his shitty eyesight haze for any sign of his glasses or phone. “I’ve been thinking lately. You balance each other out in a really good way.” 

Jeremy was tension and frost. He was the guy who would sit in the back of the class just to keep people from looking at him. Christine was bubbles and springtime. A little too neon sometimes, but bouncing right in Jeremy’s wavelength. She was the one who would join him in the back corner not because he seemed shy, but because he must be so _bored_ back there all alone and he didn’t need to talk if he didn’t want to, but did he want to hear about this really _awesome_ thing that happened to her earlier? And it was just enough to pull Jeremy out of his shell bit by bit. To melt the ice on his shoulders, while also cooling her frantic fire.

They were in the same lane of awkward. Christine too much for the masses and Jeremy finding the masses to be too much. Like the moon and the stars. Complementary colors in their own little corner between the window and the whiteboard. 

He turned back to Jeremy, who was grinning moonlight. “She said you called her to give her the ‘scary Michael talk.’”

Michael groaned. “Oh, god. Okay, before you say anything—”

“Which is—”

“That was right after I thought you kissed me—”

“Really, she thought it was cute.”

“And I kinda panicked.”

Jeremy shook his head, smile fading. “Dude, I would’ve too.” He shifted awkwardly in his shitty, hospital-ordered folding chair. His hand drifted the back of his neck, fingers brushing at his hairline. At his brainstem and the remnants of metal filings. “Like, at least with mine, I knew what was happening.”

“Yeah.”

His hand fell. “...Did it say why it—?”

Michael closed his eyes. _Not now._ “Some sort of emotional manipulation bullshit, I’m sure.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fucking—” Michael’s skull hurt again. “Don’t be. I’m the idiot. And—” He shook his head, keeping his eyes screwed shut against his own words. “And if you like, never want to see me again or whatever, just tell me, and—”

“Michael,” Jeremy said, and his voice was so pillowy and warm that Michael _had_ to look. “I’ve missed you, too.”

God, this boy was gonna make him _cry._ “Seriously, I’d understand if you’re too creeped out, or—”

Jeremy cut him off with a rib-cracking hug. 

Thrown awkwardly across the side of the bed, arms in a death-grip around him, Jeremy hugged Michael like he might crumble to dust if he didn’t. Michael fought to catch his breath. He hugged back, and Jeremy was so warm, so _real._ His nose was buried in Jeremy’s soft hair; it smelled faintly of designer shampoo that must’ve been a remnant of the Squip, but which suited him somehow. Tears bubbled behind Michael’s eyes. 

“Shut the fuck up.” Jeremy’s breath tickled against his collarbone. Michael held him tighter. His best friend was a tangled pile of limbs, toppled half-on top of him, and Michael had never felt more at home, even on a cardboard hospital mattress. 

He’d never felt more loved. 

It wasn’t what he’d expected. Which was okay. 

This was Jeremy. Actually, really Jeremy. This wasn’t his middle school crush or a self-loathful mess of a sixteen-year-old. It wasn’t a spitting insult amidst searing flames, and it wasn’t a wintergreen hologram of a science fiction Galatea. 

This was Jeremy who had given up everything for even a hint of guidance. Who had placed all his hopes on Christine—and gotten her, no matter what. 

It was also Jeremy who was working—however slowly—to patch the quilt he’d torn in his wake. 

His best friend.

Jeremy untangled himself. “Look, I gotta go, but—AotD at my place soon? Before the cast party, with pizza. Dad’s been trying this new thing he calls ‘family dinner,’ and I’m getting real sick of burnt spaghetti.”

Michael laughed. He felt like he was walking on air. “How the hell do you burn spaghetti?”

Jeremy forced a grimace over top of his own giggles, stumbling off the bed. _“Really._ If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was trying to kill me.”

Michael bit down on his giddy grin and the swooping heat in his chest, threatening more happy, relieved tears. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “That sounds good.”

“My dad poisoning me or—?”

The smile came out full force. “Shut up, you know what I meant.” Michael looked at Jeremy, glaring playfully back at him from the door, and he let all the chaos of the past few weeks, the past few months, burn away, flooded out by the heat of the happiness glowing in his chest. “See ya, man,” he said.

Jeremy grinned, shook his head, and ducked out, flashing Michael a peace sign as he went.

“Nerd,” Michael said.

A distant buzzing brought his attention back to his missing phone. A few seconds of frantic rustling revealed it hiding beneath a pile of notes on his blood pressure (perfectly normal), along with his glasses. 

For the first time since he’d bartered with the Spencer’s guy for counterfeit Hi-C, he had a text. Several texts.

Someone had added him to a group chat. It was titled ‘Brain-Fuck Crew,’ probably courtesy of Rich. A stream of notifications showed well-wishes, prayers, and memes. Brooke was asking if he’d finished his coffee date horror book yet.

Christine had decided to spam-text him. In the latest of like, eight, she said, “Okay, I know it’s not _exactly_ a _Secret_ Santa, because _I_ know who everyone’s getting, but that’s not the point!” Michael rolled his eyes. He would worry about holiday shopping later. Or never, if he could get away with it.

He also had a single text from Jenna. “Hey, Robin, you alive?” she said.

Michael shot back with a gif of a goat sticking its tongue out. 

The phone buzzed in his hand. From his best friend, unprompted for the first time in what felt like a lifetime: “Omg fuck fuck fuck shit fuck I hate this parking lot.”

His best friend. The Luigi to his Mario. The best Co-Op buddy a guy could have. His Player Two. 

Or, according to Jenna, the Batman to his Robin.

Michael sent a final "LMAO" to Jeremy and let his phone fall to his chest. He stared up at the ceiling, which was still just as boring and white with his glasses. The blankets were itchy and the mattress was plywood and he wanted nothing more in the world for them to let him out so he could take Jeremy up on that gaming session.

Maybe they could find a way to both be Player One this time. 

Yeah, that sounded pretty good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized about halfway through writing this that major medication of any kind probably wouldn’t be used for a single seizure of apparently unknown origin, but I liked the banter too much to change it.
> 
> This chapter is a bit tonally different from the others, but I think I like it. It shows that they’re trying to get better, finally.
> 
> I adore feedback, so please feel free to tell me what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> Have a dose of angst! I'm trying, at least.
> 
> This will probably be really slow to update. I have higher standards for my longer works, so I tend to fight with them before I post them. I do fully intend to finish it, eventually, though. I've got an outline and I'm ready to go.
> 
> I adore feedback, so please feel free to tell me what you think!


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